17-05-2025
George Clooney: I will keep pushing until Elgin Marbles return to Greece
George Clooney has called for the Elgin Marbles to be handed over to Greece.
The Oscar winner has said he will personally 'keep pushing' until there is an agreement to send the 2,500-year-old sculptures back to Athens.
Clooney has stated confidently that the Marbles will be sent to Greece amid ongoing talks between the Greek government and George Osborne, the chairman of the British Museum.
Clooney told Ta Nea, the Greek newspaper: 'They're going to come back. I know they are.'
He added: 'My wife and I both have worked to get the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece. We'll keep pushing until it happens. There's no question about it.'
The remarks were made last week in New York City, where Clooney is currently starring in the Broadway adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck, the 2005 film he also directed and co-wrote.
The actor's comments mark a continuation of his outspoken support for the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles – a position he first brought to international attention more than a decade ago.
Clooney first made his views on the Marbles public in 2014 during a promotional tour for the film The Monument Men. He said that returning the artefacts would be 'the right thing to do'.
That same year, his wife Amal Clooney, along with a team of legal experts, visited Athens at the invitation of the Greek government to devise a legal option to pursue the return of the Marbles.
Their recommendation, detailed in a comprehensive 600-page report, was ultimately not adopted by the Greek government.
But it was later published as a book under the title Who Owns History?, which Mrs Clooney called a 'powerful cry for justice'. She praised the work for laying out 'the case for reuniting the Parthenon Marbles in Athens once and for all'.
Clooney's calls for the return of the Marbles provoked a firm response from Boris Johnson, the London mayor at the time, who said that 'someone urgently needs to restore George Clooney's marbles'.
Mr Johnson accused Clooney of 'advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London's cultural treasures', referencing Nazi plans to plunder the British Museum during World War II.
Clooney later dismissed Johnson's comments as 'too much hyperbole washed down with a few whiskies'.
In 2021, Clooney reiterated his position about the artefacts, telling Dame Janet Suzman – the chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles – that 'the Parthenon Sculptures must be returned to their original owner'.
Demands for the return of the Marbles to Athens, where they once adorned the Parthenon, have been long-standing.
Despite ongoing talks between Greek ministers and Mr Osborne, no solution to the ongoing dispute appears to be in sight.
The British Museum is prevented by law from disposing of the artefact held in its collection, meaning it could at best offer Greece a loan.
Greece will not agree to this, as any loan would require a legal recognition of the British Museum's ownership, and the Greek government believes the Marbles were stolen by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century.
The only solution would be for the UK government to change the law binding the British Museum, but Labour has no intention of doing so.
In the first public intervention on the issue last month, Sir Chris Bryant, the arts minister, said the best Britain could offer Greece was a 'temporary' agreement.
He said: 'Under existing law, it would be impossible for there to be a permanent or indefinite loan.'
The British Museum Act 1963 makes clear that trustees have to retain treasures for the public, and ensure all loans are temporary.
There have been efforts to rally support for repatriation within Parliament.
John Lefas, the Greek millionaire, has attempted to organise this under the umbrella of the Parthenon Project.
This project counts figures such as Lord Vaizey among its members, who advocate for a 'cultural exchange' between Britain and Greece which would see the Marbles traded for a rolling exhibition of other antiquities.
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