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FFS
Anyone?
Not a Scooby.
pretty underwhelming tbh, far more interesting things to see in the British museum
I imagine in the right context- ie in Athens - theyd be better
PMQs presumably.
Is this a Mornington Crescent variation? I'll try the Louvre, via the Brandenburg gate.
Do you mean the artworks which are a product of a brutal slave owning society where the role of women was to be completely subservient & which were funded by a successful war of aggressive expansion?
Don't know why anyone would want to display them.
pretty underwhelming tbh, far more interesting things to see in the British museum
I imagine in the right context- ie in Athens – theyd be better
My thoughts as well. They are completely out of context in a sterile room in the BM. If they weren't famous for being the Elgin Marbles I think that the majority of the public would walk straight past them like they do with all the boring Greek monumental stuff.
Yeah, don't stick 'em up there mate.
A&E is busy enough as it is.
PMQs presumably.
Yeah, that was a weird one. Meeting the PM of Greece and reiterating the UK's long term position is apparently "taking sides with the EU against the UK". Is Sunak planning to avoid all contact with the outside world from now on...? Well, apart from lining up some cushy future "work" for himself in the USA of course. Oh, hang on... this is why he has Cameron, isn't it... give the outside world an alternative PM to talk to, while Sunak concentrates on pretending to be a myopic little Englander for the home market ahead of an election (don't mention the Green Card).
i wondered that, super odd to refer to something thousands of years old by the title of the last person to buy them
Do you mean the artworks which are a product of a brutal slave owning society where the role of women was to be completely subservient & which were funded by a successful aggressive war of expansion?
Don’t know why anyone would want to display them.
There's not going to be much left in the museums if that's the benchmark.
The op is stating that his buttocks are akin to a classical Greek statue and should he displayed in a national museum. Much to the chagrin of some of our European neighbours who’ve been eyeing them jealously and have stated that they want to pinch them
There isn't much in many museums, by seeing what I saw (didn't see) in two of Liverpool's this weekend. If Egypt asks for it's 'Mummies' back, 'The World Museum in Liverpool' will be empty.
According to the Rest is Politics podcast even as far back as 2002 59% of the UK population would rather they went back Greece and 18% wanted them kept in our war chest of nabbed treasures. The rest could not GAF. I'd guess the give em back brigade would be higher again by now. Not sure who Sunak is grandstanding for - the reddest of cheeked gammons presumably.
I’m not usually a supporter of ‘returning’ artefacts - it’s not like they can go back to anyone who once had them, and the ownership isn’t often clear anyway.
However, there are some pieces that clearly belong in a certain place, and I’d say this is the case with the marbles. Everyone knows where they are supposed to be, where they stood for thousands of years, and where they were specifically created to go.
Imagine if Nelson’s Column was moved and displayed somewhere else, it just wouldn’t be right. It is part of Trafalgar Square, and both the square and the statue would be diminished.
Anyway, we could easily make absolutely accurate copies now. Nobody would be able to tell the difference without microscopic analysis. Return them, replace them with copies and that will be part of the story in the BM.
The Greeks could send over a few cases of Ouzo in return - that should deaden any pain.
If Egypt asks for it’s ‘Mummies’ back,
they’ll be lucky - we ate around 3000 of them so it’ll be tricky handing them back now
Anyway, we could easily make absolutely accurate copies now. Nobody would be able to tell the difference without microscopic analysis. Return them, replace them with copies and that will be part of the story in the BM.
Apparently it's worse than that. 'We' (as in British experts) decided to paint them in something we thought would preserve them. But it didn't - it hastened their demise. Therefore the plaster casts that were taken from them before we ****ed them up is now better and crisper than the originals.
Nelson's column is one analogy. A better one would be if Germany had won WW2 and we had been absorbed into the Third Reich. They then sold the stones of Stonehenge to the Japanese to grease the wheels of a trade deal. Upon getting our independence back we asked the Japanese for our stones back and were told to sod off.
Best bit is they weren't brought to the UK as a treasure to preserve in a museum, they were nicked by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin to stick on his fancy new mansion which didn't actually get built because he couldn't afford it. Out right case of greed and theft, at least some of the other treasures the UK brough home were done with the intention of of preservation and display.
High time to send them back but unlikely to happen in the current culture war. Need the Tories out and whoever takes over to quietly give them back.
If they weren’t famous for being the Elgin Marbles I think that the majority of the public would walk straight past them like they do with all the boring Greek monumental stuff.
I don’t consider myself to be a total philistine but when it was being discussed on the radio yesterday I thought what’s so special about these marbles. It was only then that I looked them up and discovered they are statues made from marble rather than spheres used for children’s games. I’m sure if you had asked 1000 people at random in Britain on Monday (a) what they were; (b) where they were; (c) if they would pay money to go and see them, the answers would be “not sure”, “Elgin”, “not a chance” from 50% at least!
BUT if those 1000 people were public school, anti-EU, empire loving 50+ white men who influence the ERG etc then I am sure the answers would be very different.
now, despite me not giving a shit about them, I understand that had Lord Elgin not saved them they would likely have been destroyed by the Greeks/Turks/Germans. The U.K. bought them from Lord Elgin at some considerable cost. So if Greece want them back there’s a discussion about the storage/preservation cost!
Put me down for the DILIGAF camp! 👍
"ooh me elgins are playing up"
So if Greece want them back there’s a discussion about the storage/preservation cost!
Or we could be grown up about it and waive the costs knowing we've helped preserve them for the future and now is the right time (30 years too late) to send them home.
they were nicked by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin to stick on his fancy new mansion which didn’t actually get built because he couldn’t afford it.
Well allegedly they were taken with the permission of the Ottoman officials who held authority in Athens at the time.
And a Parliamentary Inquiry in 1816 said they were taken legally which I guess is kind of like a shoplifter saying that because the security guard didn't stop him on the way out, the items are now legally his.
And having declared them legally Elgin's, the British Government bought them (legally of course...)
BUT if those 1000 people were public school, anti-EU, empire loving 50+ white men who influence the ERG etc then I am sure the answers would be very different.
Good point. I'd forgotten about the classically educated elite in this country. Rah rah, carry on, where's that pig?....
I think the Greeks are on pretty thin ice moaning about stuff nicked during colonial occupation
How many years do they want to go back?
Quite an interesting 3 parter recently on Freakonomics podcast about the issues of museum content, handing back and how to hand back.
https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/stealing-art-is-easy-giving-it-back-is-hard/
It was pretty interesting and talked quite a lot about the Benin Bronzes. It’s slightly American in its stance but generally pretty balanced. I hadn’t ever really given a lot of thought to how these pieces arrived where they are.
Upon getting our independence back we asked the Japanese for our stones back and were told to sod off.
Well there is plenty of loot from the UK in display in Scandinavian museums although a lot was turned into hack gold.
Some in Normandy as well.
This about sums it up
The title of that video doesnt work for starters in this case.
why are the pyramids in egypt?
because they were too heavy to bring back to england...
Both the British Museum and Natural History Museums have finally started repatriating human remains, but it's amazing in this day the fight that's been had to enable a culturally and spiritually appropriate repatriation to take place.
There was some particularly nasty treatment of many people by British subjects / Government if you look at people like Truganini and Willian Lanne.
Do you mean the artworks which are a product of a brutal slave owning society where the role of women was to be completely subservient & which were funded by a successful
The entirety of the "civilized" world until a couple of hundred years ago and a lot of it until much more recently.
The British Museum are not exactly our finest custodians of historic artefacts. They managed to lose track of hundreds of precious gems which ended up on eBay courtesy of an employee! Even after being alerted to the thefts they refused to believe or investigate them for years.
So, at this rate, the Greeks can have them - just bung a curator £50.
You can tell when you’re in a colonial power because the museums are full of foreign plunder. I’d imagine most of the world’s museums are actually very local in focus.
I highly recommend the one in Tervuren if you’re into such things and the human stories behind them.
convert
Full MemberApparently it’s worse than that. ‘We’ (as in British experts) decided to paint them in something we thought would preserve them. But it didn’t – it hastened their demise. Therefore the plaster casts that were taken from them before we **** them up is now better and crisper than the originals.
In fairness, a lot of the statues/marbles that remained in Greece ended up in worse condition or were lost entirely. So it's a bit more complex than that. The restorations were at least well intentioned- Farraday (yep that Farraday) honestly believed that he was restoring them to the "original pure whiteness". Duveen's is hard to view as anything other than vandalism though. And in the end, while there are some marbles in Greece that survived better than the museum's ones, and where they've been able to find finer details down to chisel marks, that's got to be seen against all the ones that just didn't survive.
I like the legal ownership arguments though... It's like mormonism.
We have this firman that says we can take whatever we want
Oh cool, can I see that?
No
Why not?
We, uh, lost it. You can see this translation that we made though
Um, never mind, I'll check the issuing records
No point, strangely the Turks also lost their copy
Oh that IS strange. Wait, the turks?
Well yes obviously the only people whose opinion that matters is the conquerors who turned it into a mosque and caused it to blow up
Obviously
Though we had to bribe all the local officials too
Oh
And after all, the right of Britain to own the marbles was satisfied beyond all doubt by an in-depth investigation held by...
...UNESCO maybe or some other internationally recognised authority?
...no, better still, the British parliament
Put me down for the DILIGAF camp!
Defending
Imperialists'
Larceny of
Greek
Antiquities?
****wits....
Well yes obviously the only people whose opinion that matters is the conquerors who turned it into a mosque and caused it to blow up
To be fair the Turks had been in possession since 1456 since they took it from the previous set of conquerors who had been using it as a cathedral.
To be fair the Turks had been in possession since 1456 since they took it from the previous set of conquerors who had been using it as a cathedral.
Which was effectively the end of the "Roman" empire.
I find that fact incredible, that the remains of that empire existed till only 500 odd years back.
I like the legal ownership arguments though
There was a really interesting episode of 99%Invisible obout ownership. It's a more nuanced idea than we generally realise so it's not always something that can easily be demonstrated legally.
You can claim ownership becuase you had something first, you can claim ownership becuase you've got it now, you can claim ownership because something is attached to something thats yours - (the tree grows on my land the tree is mine, the rabbits graze on my land the rabbits are mine, the trout are mine becuase they are in the river that passes through my land, the marble are in my museum), you can claim ownership because you paid for it, you can claim ownership becuase you've earned it (ie you've housed and cared for the marbles or the mummies for 200 years) , you can claim you own something becuase you inherited it from your forefathers.
We look at ownership of the marbles hinging on the agreement between the Ottoman Empire and Elgin - but the marbles predate that Empire by over a 1000 years - they just happened to be there when the Empire was occurred. The Ottoman Empire also hasn't existed for a century.
The article also introduced me to the profession of 'ownership engineering' which sounds like a fascinating line of work.
I think there was an argument for conservation at the time. Perhaps the British considered them to be vulnerable after the building was blown up 100 odd years previously. According to the Wiki article some locals were saying that when bits of sculpture fell down they were being crushed to make lime for building.
Its often been said that the reason the great pyramid is there to view in Egypt, is because the British museum found to too heavy to ship over here.
Do you mean the artworks which are a product of a brutal slave owning society where the role of women was to be completely subservient & which were funded by a successful war of aggressive expansion?
Don’t know why anyone would want to display them.
Which society would that be? ‘Cos plenty of other European governments helped themselves to stuff from the colonies they controlled all over the world, Spain and Portugal in particular with what they did in the Americas. And they had God on their side, what with Manifest Destiny ‘n’all, although we used that as an excuse to destroy the lives of countless numbers of indigenous First Nations.
The British Museum are not exactly our finest custodians of historic artefacts. They managed to lose track of hundreds of precious gems which ended up on eBay courtesy of an employee! Even after being alerted to the thefts they refused to believe or investigate them for years.
A good point, but those gems were incredibly easy to sneak out, but the lack of any investigation is inexcusable.
The loss of a Rodin sculpture worth £3 million, a life-sized figure of a Japanese man in national costume that went missing twice, among approximately 4000 items in Scottish museums is possible a bit more difficult to explain.
Returning artifacts to countries of origin is a difficult thing, though, because once you start, most major museums would be empty except for a few items, and most museums worldwide would probably close, because there’d be nothing much left for visitors to see; visitors want to see things from all over the world, no matter where in the world they are. Human remains, however, are a much more contentious subject, because very often those remains are part of a very long history involving large family groups, and it’s not just human remains, artifacts can carry as much weight as the human, as case in point are totem poles from the indigenous peoples of the North West Pacific coast, because each pole is a complete story about the tribe who carved it. One was returned recently, having been literally pulled down and stolen while the people were away from their village.
It can get really stupid, though - the individual who calls himself ‘King Uthur Pendragon’, self-declared reincarnation of King Arthur, has been demanding the human remains in Avebury museum be handed back and re-buried, because having ‘his’ ancestors in a museum is an insult.
I see a problem with that; those Neolithic people have, as far as I’m aware no living relatives, they arrived from the far Mediterranean via the now Basque region, while John Timothy Rothwell is an ex-biker from Wakefield, whose ancestors were likely a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and Viking, so he can take his stupid demands and shove them! Those people who built the Avebury-Stonehenge complexes are, quite frankly, not going to give a shit about their remains being on display, especially when the remains interred in West Kennet Longbarrow were removed for ceremonial purposes many, many times over across several centuries.
Someone on here recently recommended the Stuff the British Stole podcast. It's much more nuanced than it sounds ... but yes, there's an episode all about the marbles.
They’ve seen wars, the bottom of the ocean and even - bizarrely - been part of a boxing match.
The story of how the Parthenon Marbles actually ended up in London’s British Museum is a wild tale featuring bribes, court cases and some extremely dodgy deals.
There’s been a centuries-long campaign to get them back to their homeland. Now, a team of Greek-Australians have decided that the time for diplomacy is over and a new tactic is required.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3FCyz6uluJzmXpPwr2Xoxr
TBH I saw Tutankhamen’s deckchair and flip flops in London when it was on tour, it’s way better to let the marbles go on tour as part of an exhibition than just have them sat on a shelf gathering dust rather than interest.
The only time they usually get any interest is when some one asks for them back and the tabloids can run their Elgin marbles tripe.
I’m not sure they are actually appreciated as an item of art and history as their own real purpose seems to be gammon stirring.
Yeah, just give them back - we’ve had our go with them.
I've had the good fortune to have been to Athens and it's museum, and to have visited the Parthenon.
Subsequently, I've also been to the British Museum and have seen the "Elgin marbles".
The exhibit in the BM is shit. It's just lumps of statues in a bland, dingy room.
The point for me is that the "Elgin marbles" are more than random examples of ancient Greek sculpture; they are jigsaw pieces that clearly belong with the rest of the jigsaw picture. There are probably thousands of orphaned sculptures that the BM could display equally legitimately as examples of the craft without anyone getting upset.
To descend to squables over "ownership" is childish in the extreme and probably a result of rabble rousing (by both parties). We should be mature enough as a country to recognise that what we have is just a small part of a much greater whole and make arrangements with the Greeks for their safe return. The Greeks should be gracious enough to acknowledge that the stones would likely have been used for something else if Elgin hadn't "rescued" them, and to thank the UK for their careful custodianship.
It's not, I think, about repartiating plunder, but about helping to restore a specific artistic work.
But, elections...
The exhibit inthe BM is shit.
I used to walk past it most days as a student and never even thought to go inside. Decided to go a few years back on a whim and found the whole thing quite grotesque. Probably doesn’t help that I did a Historical Geography MA in between.
So, same as Tillydog, I visited the acropolis museum in 2021. The "marbles" that I think are most missed are some of the friezes that originally adorned the Parthenon just below the roofline. These tell stories and history and have been moved into the museum to preserve them, air pollution etc. They are a fantastic huge exhibit in a glass walled hall that looks across to the Parthenon and are mounted on the same scale and order that they would originally have been on the temple.
Problem is that as you walk around marvelling at these huge bits of ancient carving, each one is 1.22m long and a metre high, (its 160m in length in total) you get to bits that are missing, with an explanation saying we nicked it!
I sat in various parts of this hall, sometimes listening to passing tour guides explain the same to their parties. The conversations that followed were cringe inducing, varying from disbelief to some anger.
It really is time these artifacts are returned, they just belong there , I think the jigsaw analogy upthread is sound.
We really are doing ourselves no favours hanging onto them.
Which society would that be?
Pretty good description of Athens at the time of the building of the Parthenon. Where the Delian league was turning into the the Athenian protection racket.
has been demanding the human remains in Avebury museum be handed back and re-buried, because having ‘his’ ancestors in a museum is an insult.
Seahenge being another good example where a bunch of nutters declared it was a sacred site for them and it shouldnt be investigated. Odd no one had seen them worshipping there previously.
No don't sell them, that's just going to make the UK look even worse, you just hand them back - get laser cut copies made and no-one would care.
As far as the argument goes about 'well yeah but that would set a precedent and then the BM would be emptied' well yeah, doing the right thing isn't a finite act
.
Offer to sell them to Greece for the price the British Museum paid - £35,000. Sunak can claim he's a deal maker, the marbles go back to their home and the £35k can be spent across infrastructure projects in the North or potholes or tax cuts or whatever.
Sell stolen property back to original owner? I'd imagine if you'd had your bike nicked you'd probably be reluctant to pay the thief or even the person that had bought the bike.
Just be the statesman and give them back.
FWIW I love the british museum display, I make a wee trip in there most times I'm in London, just feels like a great space and full of beautiful stuff. Being able to view everything from a distance without clutter but also get decently close is lovely, you don't often get that. It's sort of suitably monolothic I think, and the room itself isn't the point- is it "bland" or is it just not distracting from the exhibit? I've not been to the athens museum but the images I've seen don't impress me the same way- though the location is a killer edge of course.
dudeofdoom
Full MemberThe only time they usually get any interest is when some one asks for them back and the tabloids can run their Elgin marbles tripe.
I’m not sure they are actually appreciated as an item of art and history as their own real purpose seems to be gammon stirring.
It's always busy... British Museum gets 6m visitors a year and the marbles are one of the headline attractions. It's easy to get distracted by the politics but just because they're not in the headlines inbetween doesn't mean there's no interest or appreciation.
(similiarly, I want the lewis chessmen back, and I caused a wee diplomatic incident when a guide told us all about how carefully restored they'd be- they're another case of "clean all the colours off and make them lovely and white", the recently-found unrestored example is IIRC now the only surviving red one in original condition and the official explanation of "the red just mysteriously went away, we don't know why" is now obviously horseshit. But if you move them to the national museum of scotland they'll be seen by about a third as many people. Put them in a purpose built museum near where they'll found and they'll get about 40 visitors a year. Exposure/availability does count imo, the parthenon museum has 1/4 the annual visitors)
My memory is shit then, because I thought I saw them in Scotland. I don’t get to London much. Probably not been for 15 years now.
the parthenon museum has 1/4 the annual visitors
Would that change if more of the historic objects where there?
Ahh… 11 on permanent display on Scottish mainland. There were more when we saw them, presumably on loan for a while (as perhaps the Marbles could be).
Love this guy:
We have a copy of him. Tourists… huh?!?
Looks like 6 were on loan in Lewis. Put the majority of them on loan there, for a year or so, and I suspect the draw would be pretty big. If shouted about.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-18429790
Love these guys.
Anyway, a loan of some kind is the way to show the marbles off where they are of most historic interest, without the British Museum giving them up (which I don’t think they should).
This whole saga just highlights the thinking that cultural artifacts are best held in england irregardlesss of their origin and/or status of the country from which they were obtained. Mostly because of some delusion that Britain is morally superior and so on and foriegns don't know what's best for them, and if they were any good they'd have an empire too.
This sort of wetherspoons argument is why everyone thinks we're knobs
similiarly, I want the lewis chessmen back
But if you move them to the national museum of scotland they’ll be seen by about a third as many people.
Back to Scotland? They're from Norway. 🙂
Looks like 6 were on loan in Lewis. Put the majority of them on loan there, for a year or so, and I suspect the draw would be pretty big. If shouted about.
You can't physically get many people on and off the island of Lewis no matter how much you shout about it. The western isles are pretty much at capacity in visitor terms and as a whole can manage about 200,000 visits a year - thats what the British Museum sees in two weeks.