Pope Francis visits Hungary
POPE Francis last month returned to Greece the Parthenon marbles held by the Vatican Museums for some 100 years. It’s high time Britain followed the Argentine pontiff’s example.
Next year, when Greece marks the 50th anniversary of the return of democratic rule, presents an ideal opportunity.
Restoring the ancient marbles – a relief of a horse, and the heads of a young boy and bearded man – to Greece was motivated by a “sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth,” according to the Vatican.
In other words, Pope Francis added his weight to the view of the Greek Orthodox Church, also widely held by Greek people, that the Parthenon marbles, which date to the 5th century BC, need to be back in Greece.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis immediately said the Pope’s act should be followed by Britain, which holds the largest trove of Parthenon marbles.
The haul, kept in its own hall in the British Museum, includes large sections of the Parthenon frieze, an extraordinary series of relief sculptures depicting a procession of chariots, animals and people.
Of course, it helped that Francis had the authority to make a unilateral decision, Andrea Rurale, director of the masters in arts management and administration at Milan’s Bocconi University, said.
That gave him the power to override reported dissent by some within the Vatican Museums.
By comparison, Britain’s ownership of the Parthenon marbles, known as the Elgin Marbles after Lord Elgin who oversaw their removal beginning in 1801, is invested with endless angst and diverging views from innumerable stakeholders.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has ruled out amending a 1963 British law that largely forbids the British Museum from disposing of its holdings.
Thus, lending the marbles as part of a rotation arrangement based on cultural exchange would be the only way over that legal hurdle.
The Parthenon Project, a body chaired by former UK Culture Minister Ed Vaizey working with the British and Acropolis Museums to find a solution, concedes that both sides must “agree to disagree” about ownership.
Instead, it proposes a cultural partnership that would see the relics back in Athens, while Greek masterpieces could in return be housed in the British Museum for visiting exhibitions.
But the British Museum – whose collection of contested artworks includes the Rosetta Stone, preserved Maori heads from New Zealand, and some 200 Benin Bronzes – has indicated such a “cultural exchange,” wouldn’t work for Greece since it would acknowledge British ownership.
Athens argues the removal of the marbles was an act of plunder by Lord Elgin before the creation of the modern Greek state.
The British government rejected a Unesco recommendation in 2021 that it reopen talks with Greece. “Our position is clear: the Parthenon sculptures were acquired legally in accordance with the law at the time.”
The UK claims the marbles were bought by the UK Parliament from Lord Elgin in 1816 for around £350,000 (RM1.95mil) in today’s money, Elgin having received approval from the Ottoman Empire to remove the marbles in the first place.
But there is an opportunity here, and one where Pope Francis shows the way.
Greece will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the restoration of democratic rule on July 24, 2024. To mark this date, Britain should consider an unencumbered gift of the marbles to the people of Greece.
An act of parliament would be needed, but the person of King Charles III, who has often spoken of his proximity to Greece as the birthplace of his father, could be an apt emissary.
These debates highlight a change since for much of modern times, such restitution was unthinkable. The majority of curators and state owners argued art is a global heritage and best seen in big museums.
But the return of works stolen by Nazis began a global rethinking, along with high-profile battles to return looted antiquities to some Italian museums.
Laurence des Cars, director of the Louvre, has noted she is among the first generations of curators open to “giving back something when it is wrongly there.”
Indeed, the British Museum wouldn’t necessarily be left empty handed. It has more than a year to manufacture perfect copies for display – like Dippy, one of the star attractions at the Natural History Museum.
The diplodocus we see there is a plaster cast replica of the fossilised bones of a Diplodocus Carnegii skeleton, the original of which is on display at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
What’s more, the unique circumstances of the gift would also cut the risk of it setting the precedent for an emptying of British museums, a deep-seated fear in the UK, where a growing reconsideration of the role of its empire is underway after generations of it being considered purely benevolent.
At the Vatican Museums, the return of the Parthenon marbles is being seen as a one-off that has no bearing on its trove of artworks.
And for Britain it would provide an opportunity, to foster friendship in Greece, and by implication to start to mend a fracture with Europe too. Should Greece then decide on its own merits to send artworks for exchange to the British Museum, then all to the good. — BloombergRachel Sanderson writes for Bloomberg. The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
