The British institution always reluctant to restore Greek friezes and sculptures to their country of origin, despite the gains that this could bring it in terms of image, at a time when more than half of the British are favorable to this restitution.
by Cécile Ducourieux (London, correspondent)
Analysis. The rooms devoted to the marbles of the Parthenon remain a must of the British Museum, a London institution with 5 million annual visitors. Clusters of college students in uniforms, tourists riveted to their audioguide: the immense gallery exposing the friezes and sculptures of the pediments of the most famous of the Greek temples, on the hill of the Acropolis, in Athens, is always crowded.
These 2,500 -year -old sculptures were won from the temple dedicated to the goddess Athena at the beginning of the 19th th century, when Greece was still under Ottoman domination, on the orders of the British diplomat Lord Elgin, who sold them to the British Museum in 1816. Since it became independent, in 1832, Greece has always challenged this property and claimed the return of the Marbres, which it considers an inalienable part of its history. Their place is in Athens, argue the Greek authorities, in a magnificent museum built at the foot of the acropolis specially to exhibit them and opened in 2009.
Until now, the British Museum has resisted all these pressures, sticking to its version: the marbles belong to it, their levy having been authorized by the Ottoman administration. The institution also sits behind a British law, the British Museum Act of 1963, which prohibits it from giving in his works, except exceptional circumstances. But public opinion evolves, other institutions in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the Western world are increasing the restitutions. The status quo becomes difficult.
Call for a “new partnership”
Arrived at the head of the British Museum in October 2021, George Osborne, 51, former finance minister of the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, began serious discussions with Athens in 2022. This ex-partisan of budgetary cultivating cultivating An image of modernizer would even be close to an agreement with Athens relating to a “cultural exchange”, with long -term loans, the British media reported. Present in London in December, the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has also been optimistic, believing that the return of the marbles was “possible”.
The British Museum “publicly called a new partnership of the Parthenon with Greece” and confirmed discussions “with everyone, including the Greek government”, while excluding “to dismantle [its] superb collection”. The British government has excluded any amendment from the British Museum Act. Athens sticks, for its part, in its position: a long -term loan is not satisfactory, the country wants to recover the property of the marbles.
You have 56.1% of this article to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.