Greece renews calls for artefact returns after British Museum thefts
www.euronews.com
Questions are being raised about the British Museum's security protocols, its handling of thefts, and how long senior management was aware before action was taken. Now, Greece is renewing its calls for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.
  • @PaulDevonUK@lemmy.world
    26•1 year ago

    Make replicas and send the originals back.

    With today’s technology and help from skilful artists I doubt that anyone could tell the difference.

    • manny_stillwagon
      14•1 year ago

      Today’s technology? We’ve had plaster casts for millennia. Story time!

      The Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece has replicas of the marbles on display on the second floor, as it’s all they have. When the Acropolis Museum was being constructed, the British Museum sent two sets of casts for them to use (refusing once again to return the originals). The first was a set of basically placeholder casts that were made quickly so that the folks building the Acropolis Museum could plan out the space / measure them for mounting, etc. They’re ugly, lack a bunch of detail and have visible seams where the casts were put together. Later, they sent a second set that were much more carefully done and are, in reality, very nice. They show a lot of detail and are, aside from the fact that they’re made of plaster, nearly indistinguishable from the original marbles. Now, which set do you think the Greeks elected to hang in the museum?

      If you go visit the Acropolis Museum today, you can get a guided tour where the guide will take you up to the second floor, show you these awful, sloppily done plaster casts and loudly lament how the British Museum won’t return the originals and only sent them these shitty casts which they have no choice but to hang here since they have nothing else to use and isn’t it just insulting how terrible they are and how little the British care?

      It’s honestly a little hilarious. The British Museum needs to return the Parthenon Marbles and display the nice casts themselves for many reasons but “make the Acropolis Museum more than just the Monument to Greek Bitterness” is somewhere on that list.

    • hoodatninja
      15•1 year ago

      Why are the Pyramids in Giza?
      They couldn’t fit in a British museum.

    • @JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
      10•1 year ago

      Only the things they couldn’t carry. There was a colossal head and arm of an Egyptian statue in the British museum, and a plaque saying the rest of the statue (body and legs) were still where they found it. Presumably because they were to heavy to take back.

    • @Calanon@lemmy.world
      7•1 year ago

      There are some things - there are quite a few things that were either gifted by ambassadors or legitimately bought (as opposed to the dubious purchase of the Partheneon marbles) and also British artefacts.

    • @SheeEttin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      Well, there were those artifacts that went missing recently. Those aren’t in the British Museum any more.

  • Trudge [Comrade]
    19•1 year ago

    Eternal reminder that Britain mismanaged Parthenon Marbles so they are permanently damaged.

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Questions are being raised about the British Museum’s security protocols, its handling of thefts, and how long senior management was aware before action was taken.

    The security questions raised by the missing objects “reinforces the permanent and just demand of our country for the definitive return” of the Marbles, Greece’s Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, said in a recent interview with the newspaper To Vima.

    Tim Loughton told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that news of items going missing from the museum’s collection in London is “damaging” but the institution is taking the thefts “seriously”.

    The Conservative MP added: “For reassurance, people want to know the extent of the objects which have disappeared, what investigations took place at the time when various reports came in and what is being done now because otherwise (it’s) getting out of hand.”

    The institution said it planned to take “legal action” against Peter John Higgs, a senior curator of Greek and Roman art who had worked at the museum for 30 years.

    The museum has strenuously denied claims of a cover-up after it was reported that managers were warned two years ago that items were being taken from the collection and sold.

    The original article contains 682 words, the summary contains 198 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!