Parthenon marbles back in play - Front Page - controversial plan for Elgin marbles to be loaned to Greece for the Olympics - Brief Article

Hoping to secure a long-term loan of the so-called Elgin marbles from the British Museum in time for the 2004 summer Olympics in Athens, Greek officials have put aside their ownership claim, toned down their accusatory rhetoric and offered to ply the British Museum with loans of antiquities from Greek museums to help fill the expansive gallery that now displays the works. They have also announced plans to begin construction in Athens this summer of a 270,000-square-foot, Bernard Tschumi-designed museum to house architectural elements and sculptures from the Acropolis. The museum is meant to include the contested marbles that adorned the Parthenon until they were removed to England under controversial circumstances in the early 19th century by Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which then included Athens.

The Greek cause got a significant boost in January from an archeologist who is also a member of the British Parliament. Richard Allan is spearheading the new "Parthenon 2004" campaign to send the marbles to Athens in time for the Olympics, without addressing the question of ownership. The campaign has won support, at this writing, from 104 members of Parliament and a bevy of well-known British actors, including Judi Dench, Janet Suzman and Vanessa Redgrave.

None of this is likely to move the British Museum's director, Robert Anderson, who asserted in an opinion piece, published Jan. 15 in the London Times, that lending the marbles would be "transparently against the interests of the many visitors who flock to the British Museum from all over the world." Anderson, whose museum is now making serious cutbacks to address a severe financial crisis, will be replaced Aug. 1 by Neil MacGregor, director of the National Gallery in London. MacGregor recently told A.i.A. that he had "not yet had time properly to consider the role of the Parthenon marbles" at the British Museum, "so I do not at the moment feel able to embark on what is clearly an extremely important topic of discussion."

The Greek Ministry of Culture has indicated in a written policy statement that it will not press an ownership claim for the marbles. The new focus is not title but location--"where they are and where they should be." Anderson contends that "the restitutionist premise ... would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world." The Greek ministry asserts, however, that relocating the marbles to Athens "need not and should not create a precedent," because they belong to a "unique monument which is the supreme symbol of the Greek cultural heritage and the Western civilization."

The $78-million New Acropolis Museum, situated on a street at the foot of the Acropolis, will be crowned by a glass-enclosed Parthenon Gallery that will provide a view of the temple above. Within that huge space, the marbles will be arrayed around the outside of a rectangular structure that is the same length and width as the Parthenon. Other elements of the monument will be arranged as they were at the original site.

Tschumi, who was selected as architect last October, concedes that the 2004 deadline imposes a "mad schedule" on a project that has been under discussion, With many false starts, for 25 years, but he nevertheless claims it is "entirely feasible." Even if the British Museum's marbles are eventually reintegrated with those now in Athens, the depiction of the Panathenaic Festival procession in the famous frieze will not regain seamless continuity. Some portions are forever lost, and the expatriate pieces now differ greatly in appearance from their Athens counterparts, due to both a misguided scrubbing of the London pieces in the late 1930s and the serious erosion of the Athens surfaces caused by that city's notorious pollution. Nevertheless, art lovers and scholars would undoubtedly welcome the chance to see one of the world's most celebrated monumental art works at least partially reassembled.

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