Latest news with #ParthenonMarbles
The Guardian
11-07-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Campaigners call for end to ‘covert' deal to return Parthenon marbles to Greece
The former prime minister Liz Truss, historian David Starkey and former Welsh secretary John Redwood are reportedly among 34 signatories to a letter alleging the British Museum is part of a 'covert' campaign to return the Parthenon marbles to Greece. The letter, seen by Sky News, has been reportedly sent to Keir Starmer, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, and trustees of British Museum. The letter has been organised by the hard-right campaign group Great British Pac, led by the Conservative activist Claire Bullivant and former Reform deputy co-leader Ben Habib. It is said to call for an end to any negotiations to return the Parthenon sculptures, also known as the Elgin marbles, or risk legal challenges. In the letter, campaigners call out what they allege as a 'covert negotiation', citing an 'accelerating campaign to remove the Elgin marbles from the British Museum'. The Parthenon, or Elgin, marbles are the ancient Greek sculptures that once decorated the temple on the Acropolis in Athens. They were removed between 1801 and 1815 by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman empire, who claimed he had permission to take them, although no supporting document has been found. The sculptures were acquired by the British Museum in 1816, but their rightful ownership has been disputed since the 1980s. Last year, two months after Labour's electoral victory, Giorgos Gerapetritis, the Greek foreign minister, told the Guardian he believed a deal was 'relatively close'. Negotiations between Athens and the British Museum began in 2021. It has been previously reported that any possible agreement might be underpinned by a cultural partnership between the two countries, with the sculptures returned to Athens and reunited with other pieces currently on display at the Parthenon galleries of the Acropolis Museum in exchange for renowned art works that could take centre stage at rolling exhibitions in London. Responding to the reports about the Great British Pac letter, Dan Hicks, professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford, said: 'The accusation of a covert and accelerating campaign appears to be aimed at publicly appointed trustees, whereas in reality it is the structure, funding and identity of Great British Pac that is opaque and concerning. 'Perhaps the signatories could explain who and what exactly this group is and who is paying for it. This letter is a desperate culture-warrior exercise in scaremongering and intimidation developed by undefined political actors.' He added: 'International loans have been a normal part of the operation of museum exhibitions for more than a century. To give just one example, the British Museum itself will be the recipient of a high-profile loan from France next year when the Bayeux tapestry will be put on display. Many will question why the UK's national museums remain unable to make permanent returns of stolen cultural objects on a case-by-case basis, as other British museums are able to do. 'And some, myself included, have been asking why national museum directors and trustees are not calling for a change in those antiquated 1960s laws. But to call into question the legality of making loans from Britain to an EU nation would be very odd indeed.' A spokesperson for the British Museum said: 'Discussions with Greece about a Parthenon partnership are ongoing and constructive. 'We believe that this kind of long-term partnership would strike the right balance between sharing our greatest objects with audiences around the world, and maintaining the integrity of the incredible collection we hold at the museum.'
Wall Street Journal
23-05-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
‘Frieze Frame' Review: The Case of the Parthenon Marbles
The debate surrounding the rightful place of the Parthenon Marbles, which were removed from the Acropolis, the site of the ancient complex of temples that overlooks Athens, by agents of Lord Elgin and delivered to London in the first years of the 19th century, is an old one—so old that its terms were framed by the poets Byron and Keats in the 1810s, soon after the Marbles' arrival in England. Keats's 1817 visit to the British Museum, where the Marbles had been recently installed, inspired his rapturous sonnet 'On Seeing the Elgin Marbles' ('My spirit is too weak—Mortality / Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep'). His companion at the museum, the history painter and diarist Benjamin Haydon, encouraged the British government to purchase from Elgin the portions of the Parthenon frieze that he had acquired, and it is not unreasonable to suppose Keats agreed. He returned to examine them 'again and again,' his friend Joseph Severn remembered, 'and would sit for an hour or more at a time beside them rapt in revery.' Keats's reflections on mortality were not merely for effect—his death, of tuberculosis, came four years later.
Kuwait Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Kuwait Times
Clooney says confident Parthenon Marbles will return to Greece
US actor George Clooney arrives for the 78th Annual Tony Awards "Meet the Nominees" event in New York City.--AFP Oscar-winning actor George Clooney says he is certain the Parthenon Marbles will return to Greece, adding in an interview that their repatriation is a "family" matter for him and his wife. "They're going to come back. I know they are," Clooney told to the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea in an interview published Saturday. Athens has for decades demanded the return of the sculptures from the British Museum, saying they were looted in 1802 by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Clooney's wife Amal Alamuddin Clooney, a human rights lawyer, has since 2011 advised several Greek governments to take the case to international courts. "That's all my wife and I both have worked" towards, Clooney said. "We'll keep pushing until it happens. There's no question about it." The current government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has escalated its efforts for the repatriation of the Marbles, making official and unofficial meetings with the new UK government of Keith Starmer last autumn. - AFP
Asharq Al-Awsat
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Clooney Says Confident Parthenon Marbles Will Return to Greece
Oscar-winning actor George Clooney says he is certain the Parthenon Marbles will return to Greece, adding in an interview that their repatriation is a "family" matter for him and his wife. "They're going to come back. I know they are," Clooney told to the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea in an interview published Saturday. Athens has for decades demanded the return of the sculptures from the British Museum, saying they were looted in 1802 by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Clooney's wife Amal Alamuddin Clooney, a human rights lawyer, has since 2011 advised several Greek governments to take the case to international courts. "That's all my wife and I both have worked" towards, Clooney said. "We'll keep pushing until it happens. There's no question about it." The current government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has escalated its efforts for the repatriation of the Marbles, making official and unofficial meetings with the new UK government of Keith Starmer last autumn.
The Sun
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
George Clooney Backs Return of Parthenon Marbles
ATHENS: Oscar-winning actor George Clooney says he is certain the Parthenon Marbles will return to Greece, adding in an interview that their repatriation is a 'family' matter for him and his wife. 'They're going to come back. I know they are,' Clooney told to the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea in an interview published Saturday. Athens has for decades demanded the return of the sculptures from the British Museum, saying they were looted in 1802 by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Clooney's wife Amal Alamuddin Clooney, a human rights lawyer, has since 2011 advised several Greek governments to take the case to international courts. 'That's all my wife and I both have worked' towards, Clooney said. 'We'll keep pushing until it happens. There's no question about it.' The current government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has escalated its efforts for the repatriation of the Marbles, making official and unofficial meetings with the new UK government of Keith Starmer last autumn.
