British Museum’s Parthenon gallery 10-month closure prompts concerns from Greek officials and campaigners

Βy Yannis Andritsopoulos, London Correspondent for the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea, 09 October 2021 

To read the original article, follow the link here.

Six of the British Museum’s Greek galleries, including the museum’s display of the Parthenon Marbles, have been closed for almost ten months, prompting concerns from Greek officials and campaigners that wet and damp could damage the ancient artworks.

The museum was forced to close on 16 December 2020 when a national Covid-19 lockdown was put in place. It reopened on 17 May 2021, but some of its Greek galleries remained closed due to ‘essential repairs’.

Ta Nea Greek daily newspaper visited the museum last week and confirmed that a total of six galleries of Greek art have yet to reopen; Rooms 15, 16, 17 and 18 are closed due to "maintenance"; Rooms 19 and 20 are closed to "comply with social distancing measures".

The Duveen Gallery (Room 18) which houses the Parthenon Sculptures, has been closed since December 2020.

Its leaky roof has made news many times before.

In December 2018, the glass roof of Room 18 began leaking after heavy rainfall in London. Witnesses reported seeing water dripping just centimetres away from the west pediment figure of Iris. More recently, leaks were caused by a heavy rainfall on July 25th that flooded central London.

The Greek government as well as campaigners for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles have expressed concern about the poor state of the rooms.

On August 15, the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS), which represents 21 national committees around the world, wrote to the British Museum Chairman Sir Richard Lambert, its Director Dr. Hartwig Fischer and its Trustees. To read the letter, follow the link here.

A copy of the letter was also sent to Prime Minister Johnson, the newly appointed Chair of the Trustees, George Osborne and the then Secretary of Culture, Oliver Dowden.

It said that “the planned reopening of the Greek rooms, postponed ‘until further notice’, after months of lockdown, is a deep worry,” adding that the “possible humidity problem (creates) a dangerous condition for the sculptures”.

It also called on the Museum to "reconsider its viewpoint on the continued division of the Parthenon Sculptures", noting that “there is a moral obligation to return and to reunify all the surviving Parthenon Sculptures in the Acropolis Museum with a direct visual contact to the Parthenon”.

"It is saddening that Room 18 has been closed ‘until further notice’," IARPS President Dr Christiane Tytgat told Ta Nea, adding that "the inappropriate climate conditions in the room are upsetting".

"I hope," she said, " that we do not have to wait another 22 years before we can admire the Parthenon Sculptures on display in London again, as it happened before, when the Duveen Gallery was hit by a bomb in 1940 and reopened only in 1962! Even if the Sculptures were then stored in a safe place and undamaged."

Almost two months later, the Museum has not responded to the letter, which Dr. Tytgat described as "sad."

Dame Janet Suzman, Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), told Ta Nea: “I would be a happy person if Room 18 were permanently closed because those spectacular sculptures taken by the marauding Lord Elgin deserve to be reunited in the Acropolis Museum. No one can say for certain what remedial work is being done in the Greek galleries of the British Museum or for how long. The lack of climate controls in an old building are self-evident and has been questioned by BCRPM on other occasions: blow-heaters in winter, open exit doors in summer, leaking roof during the rainy season.”

“We urge the British Museum to stop repeating by rote the same mantra and to reunite those emblematic marble figures in the superlative Acropolis Museum, which has been built to the latest standards and allows visitors to view them in context with the Parthenon,” she added.

Professor Paul Cartledge, Vice-Chair of the BCRPM and Vice-President of the IARPS, told Ta Nea that he has found “the Trustees' failure to respond at all to the letter deeply disappointing - not at all the way to begin dialogueon this pressing cultural issue in a way fitting of its importance. Dismissing this very specific request is tantamount to not understanding the importance of cultural diplomacy. Time for the British Museum and the UK to join the 21st century, although it would have been good and great if they were to lead the way.”

Closed ‘until further notice’.

The website of the British Museum states that the Greek galleries are "closed until further notice", due to "regular maintenance works".

UNESCO recently expressed “concern that the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum is not currently open to the public due to essential repairs”, adding that it “looks forward to its reopening in due course.”

In his interview with Ta Nea, in January 2019, the director of the Museum, Dr. Hartwig Fischer, claimed that there was "a tiny leak" (in Room 18’s roof) which was “fixed right away ".

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s Culture minister has said that the conditions for exhibiting the Parthenon Sculptures at the British Museum “are not only inappropriate, but also dangerous”.

A British Museum spokesperson told Ta Nea that “there has previously been some water ingress in some gallery spaces closure”, adding that “there is no confirmed date for their reopening, but we are working towards later this autumn.”

The British Museum’s comment to Ta Nea in full:

“The Museum is an historic and listed building and there are ongoing infrastructure assessments across the site. We have a team of specialists who make regular checks across the Museum to monitor and ensure appropriate management of risks to the collection. The care of the collection and the safety of our visitors and staff are our utmost priority.

“The essential works being undertaken are part of a programme of building maintenance and conservation which will help enable future works on the Museum estate. Alongside these essential repairs, we are developing a strategic masterplan to transform the British Museum for the future. It will involve actively renovating our historic buildings and estate, improving our visitor experience and undertaking an ambitious redisplay of the collection in the years to come.

“Galleries 14 to 18 on the ground floor have been temporarily removed from the public access route. The Museum has undertaken a programme of work within these galleries and the scheduling of this work was delayed due to the impact of the pandemic on the Museum’s programme.

“Further works and surveys were undertaken this summer and these galleries are currently closed to ensure the safety of our visitors and the collection whilst these surveys are carried out. There has previously been some water ingress in some gallery spaces closure.

“There is no confirmed date for their reopening, but we are working towards later this autumn.”

Images below showing the closed door that has been temporaily erected across the entrance of Room 23 of the British Museu's Greek galleries. With a notice explaining that Rooms 12-18 are closed. Some of the galleries are closed for social distancing purposes with others closed for maintenance.

Photo credit: Yannis Andritsopoulos, London Correspondent for the Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea, 09.10.2010 

Dr Tom Flynn's tweet below echoes the thoughts of many millions across the globe that support the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles:

That Greek temples and sculptures were coloured, both with 'applied' polychromy (paint) and 'natural' polychromy (the use of naturally coloured materials such as gold and ivory), has been known for centuries. So it was surprising to see a flurry of articles last week (11 October) praising the British Museum for new research that makes this discovery exciting.

Paul Cartledge, Vice-Chair of BCRPM was disappointed that the articles had not credited the Acropolis Museum also.

The articles were published in The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Mail.

Professor Anthony Snodgrass, Honorary President of BCRPM, had released this statement in 2009, the press release issued then, can also be read here. 

Anthony Snodgrass, in 2009, said : "The original presence of colour on the Parthenon Marbles has been a matter of common knowledge for years. What is more, ordinary viewers can still see, with their own eyes, traces of it (in this case, dark green) surviving on the drapery in at least one of the original slabs, from the West Frieze of the Parthenon, which is in the new museum in Athens. It hardly needs "a new imaging technique" to tell us what we can see for ourselves.”

In 2023, Anthony added:

'It was, I think, a Daily Telegraph journalist who described the new Acropolis Museum, before it was actually built, as 'a hideous visitor centre in Athens'. Perhaps it's asking too much for that newspaper to reconsider this judgment; but there might at least be some acknowledgment that this story of this 'huge breakthrough' by the British Museum, was first launched, in similar form, in 2009; and that even then it could be pointed out that the same Acropolis Museum holds at least one slab, from the Parthenon West Frieze, where you can still see the traces of coloured pigment, on one draped figure', with the naked eye.'

Is this news story published on the 11th of October 2023 more British Museum propaganda or just a diversionary story?

From Athens' Acropolis Museum, and the Director General of the museum Professor Sampolidis, a letterto BCRPM when we asked him about the polychromy of the sculptures.

We also reflect on Tom Flynn's writing, published fifteen years ago:

For generations it has been common knowledge among art historians and archaeologists that the Parthenon and its sculptures would originally have been decorated. Lawrence Alma-Tadema's painting of 1868 — Pheidias and the Parthenon Frieze— depicts the sculptor showing Athenian citizens around his team's handiwork high up on the scaffold.

By the mid-nineteenth century, a lively debate was raging in British scholarly circles over the question of polychromy, the colouring of sculpture.

Today, even virtual reality reconstructions of the Parthenon use nineteenth-century sources such as Benoit Loviot's Cross-Section of the Parthenon of 1879-81 (Ecole des Beaux-Arts Paris) as their guide to the use of colour on the Parthenon. These late nineteenth-century sources were themselves drawing on much earlier research by architects such as Jacques-Ignace Hittorff (1792-1867) and Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849) which had established beyond doubt that Greek temples and sculptures were coloured, both with 'applied' polychromy (paint) and 'natural' polychromy (the use of naturally coloured materials such as gold and ivory).

Today, Thursday 19 October, Yannis Andritsopoulos, London correspondent for Greek newspaper Ta Nea has published his article, and you can read the original online here or the translation into English. 

Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni has pledged to ‘fill the void’ at the British Museum should the Parthenon sculptures be reunited with their counterparts in Athens. It’s a brilliant idea.

The Kritios Boy, a masterpiece of ancient Greek marble sculpture, currently stands atop a pedestal in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. For historians he speaks quietly of the transition from the Archaic to the Classical periods in Greek sculpture (as well as having one of the most beautiful derrières in the history of art). He could potentially be among the many extraordinary treasures never previously exhibited in the United Kingdom but which could be seen in London if the British Museum’s trustees were enlightened enough to accommodate Ms Mendoni’s workable solution to the current impasse over the Parthenon Marbles.

Were the British Museum to agree to reunite the sculptures with their counterparts in Athens, Ms Mendoni has promised that Greece would reciprocate by sending rotating loan exhibitions of ancient masterpieces like the Kritios Boy never previously seen by many UK museum-goers. To realise the many cultural and diplomatic benefits of Ms Mendoni’s initiative would require the trustees of the British Museum to expand their vision beyond considerations of ownership and begin a more cooperative relationship with Athens over the future of the Marbles.

The first stage in that process requires the amendment of the British Museum Act of 1963 which currently prohibits the deaccessioning of objects from the Museum’s collections. The British Government’s refusal to even consider such an amendment has two negative consequences. In the first instance, the way the Marbles are currently displayed in Bloomsbury perpetuates a misleading understanding of their historical importance, denying their original significance as part of the Parthenon’s architectural programme. In the Parthenon Galleries of the Acropolis Museum their connection to the monument is clear and deeply moving.

It is the duty of every museum to promote a fact-based understanding of material culture, historical and contemporary. Where the Marbles are concerned, the British Museum is currently failing in that regard.

Secondly, the refusal to amend the 1963 Act deprives the UK’s museum-going public (as well as visiting tourists) of an opportunity to learn more about the art of ancient Greece through new educational displays.

As a scholar of ancient Greek polychrome sculpture, I have visited the Acropolis Museum on numerous occasions, both in its previous romantically ramshackle location on the monument itself, and on many subsequent occasions following the opening of Bernard Tschumi’s superb new Museum at the foot of the Acropolis in 2009. Few other museums in the world are able to offer as coherent an account of the coloured nature of ancient Greek sculpture as the Acropolis Museum.

The superb ‘Colour Revolution’ exhibition currently own show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford testifies to the enduring public fascination with colour and its impact on art and design in the Victorian era. It also touches briefly on one of the central aesthetic controversies of the nineteenth century — the true coloured nature of ancient sculpture.

The British Museum has been guilty in the past of scrubbing the Parthenon Marbles with wire brushes in a misguided attempt to whiten them. It now has an opportunity to absolve itself of those errors by reopening the conversation with Athens.

The immediate and long-term benefits are obvious for all to see. George Osborne has an opportunity to cement his legacy by persuading his Eton and Oxbridge colleagues in government to revisit the British Museum Act. Mark Jones might also go down in history as more than merely an “interim” director of the Museum but rather the man whose brief custodianship opened a new chapter in museum diplomacy.

Dr Tom Flynn

International Women's Day was celebrated at the Acropolis Museum with a special event organised by the museum and the Marianna V. Vardinoyannis Foundation on the evening of Tuesday 08 March 2022. Guest of honour was H.E the President of the Hellenic Republic, Ms Katerina Sakellaropoulou. The event was entitled 'The Expatriate Goddesses of the Parthenon'.

Tom Flynn, supporter for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles for many decades, travelled from the UK and spoke at the event. To read Tom's full speech, kindly visit our Articles and Research section or follow the link here.

16 October 2013, Room P4B001, European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium

Tom Flynn's presentation at yesterdays Round Table at the European Parliament in Brussels.

The round table was organised by The Swiss Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic and MEP Rodi Kratsa, Vice-President European Parliament 2007-2012.

 The Parthenon Marbles — A European Concern

Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, distinguished members of the European Parliament. Let me begin by thanking Professor Sidjanskifor the kind invitation to contribute to today's Round Table. It is a pleasure and an honour to be with you in Brussels.

What can we say about the case for reunifying the Parthenon Marblesthat has not been said a thousand times before? What more can we add to the numerous persuasive argumentsalready made for reuniting the dismembered components of Phidias's finest achievement? How many more times must we convene to reiterate the importance of restoring coherence to a work of art whose desecration at the hands of Lord Elgindamaged one of Greece's greatest gifts to the world?

The answer to these questions is that there will always be more to say about the case for reunifying the Marbles. There will always be new and ever more compelling arguments for reuniting them in Athens. And until that happens our generation and future generations will continue to convene and will go on reminding the British Museumof its moral duty to restore to these objects the dignity that Lord Elgin so rudely snubbed.The story the Marbles tell, is of a cultural moment that is a precious and irreplaceable part of our birthright as Europeans and the bedrock of our democratic ideals. That story loses much of its narrative charge while its components remain dispersed across different locations.

The Parthenon Marbles are more than just a work of art. They are more than a mechanism through which to increase the footfall of cultural tourism. They are more than a means by which to impose some meaning on the randomly accumulated collections of an encyclopaedic museum.

The reason the Parthenon Marbles transcend conventional museum categorisation is that they have the potential to demonstrate that in a time of global economic turmoil and geopolitical unrest cultural objects can unite us across national boundaries and remind us of our shared humanity. I say 'potential' because there is an irrefutable logic to the proposition that a united,coherent sequence of objects that speaks with such clarity of our shared background is more likely to foster unity among nations than a fragmented series of objects that continues to symbolise disunion and cultural rupture. For this process to begin, however, the dialogue between Greece and London must rise to a higher level based on mutual trust and generosity of spirit.

The Parthenon Marbles are unquestionably important within the cultural landscape, but they have become renowned for all the wrong reasons. While they should be celebrated for representing the zenith of the Periclean building programme of fifth-century Athens, instead they are more widely recognised as the most controversial and divisive objects in world culture. They should be peacemakers but we are not allowing them to take up that peacekeeping role. Thus they have become emblematic of the wider disputes between western museums and developing nations that have become known as the 'culture wars'. While the Marbles remain immured within the Stygian gloom of the Duveen Galleries where their true significance to European art and culture is so wilfully misinterpreted and misunderstood — our attempts to build harmony in the realm of cultural heritage will be impaired. The international museum community — but more specifically the British Museum — has the power to repair that rupture. The symbolic resonance of a unifying gesture of this kind could be profound and long-lasting.

Allow me briefly to frame this within a broader context. The events that unfolded in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, and now in Syria, have brought unprecedented quantities of looted cultural objects onto the international art market. Many of these objects are removed from ancient sites under cover of darkness by local people seeking to scrape a meagre living for themselves and their families. Such subsistence looting destroys what archaeologists refer to as an object's 'provenience', that is the specific positional coordinates and context in which the object was located in the ground, tomb or temple site. Having been extracted, the objects and artefacts are moved up the art market food-chain, so to speak, before finally ending up in the home of wealthy collectors or museums.

Most museums now know better than to acquire objects of uncertain ownership history and the UNESCO guidelines have set down clear markers on acquisition. Moreover, thanks to the Internet and related communications technologies the world's encyclopaedic museums are now vigilantly monitored by well-informed individuals and interested parties for any hint of a problematic acquisition. The social network has become a critical filter surveying the movement of cultural heritage goods and no longer can museums acquire or display suspect objects without risking public exposure and widespread condemnation.

Nevertheless, so profound and widespread is the political turmoil ravaging the Middle East that the traffic in cultural objects is now arguably out of control. It is unlikely to improve until peace and economic stability return to the nations affected. Museums are implicated in this 'food-chain', partly as a consequence of their historical development as the repositories of cultural objects and partly because of their self-imposed obligation to continue collecting. In the last few months a major Australian museum was found to have acquired an important temple statue of Shiva that had been looted from a site in South Asia. It now seems likely that other museums were recipients of objects from the same supply chain. That said, on the other side of the equation, many museums have taken it upon themselves to return objects that have been recognised as being of specific sacred or ritual value to the source nations and communities from which they were originally expropriated during earlier times.

It is against the background of ongoing cultural upheaval that the British Museum now has an opportunity make an extraordinary gesture of reconciliation by reunifying the Parthenon Marbles. This would set an example to other museums around the world and would confirm that contrary to what many people have been led to believe, the British Museum DOES appreciate and respect the architectural significance of the Parthenon Marbles in relation to the Acropolis monument. It would be an acknowledgement that their very uniqueness justifies an amendment to the British Museum Act that has hitherto obstructed substantive progress on the issue. Our most eminent cultural heritage lawyer, Professor Norman Palmer of University College London, has pointed out that such an amendment would be perfectly achievable. This would clear the way for both parties to enter with open minds into a constructive mediation process. Instead of cleaving to an anachronistic legal instrument that will merely perpetuate the impasse, the British Museum now has an opportunity to demonstrate that Europe — and indeed the rest of the world — is unified by cultural objects, not divided by them.

Dr Tom Flynn FRICS

15 October 2013, Brussels

Cultural heritage and its symbols undoubtedly constitute the main capital of European peoples and the soul of the European Union. Respecting and restoring them is a European obligation and concern.

Rodi Kratsa MEP, European Parliament.

 http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/henry-porter/parthenon-sculptures-its-about-liberty-too

Henry Porter : "One of the reasons I am here is the late Christopher Hitchens, a good friend with whom I worked and argued for twenty years. 

I disagreed with Christopher on practically everything - his belief in the innate corruption of Mother Teresa, for example, his enthusiasm for the Iraq invasion and for gun ownership in the United States.  

But on the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens, Christopher was right, and I want to take the opportunity to salute the work he did in pressing the case for restitution. To some extent my contribution today is in memory of his stimulating company and his ability to make us all think and argue better, however crazy some of his notions.  In his book, The Parthenon Marbles, he was at his most forensic, passionate and brilliantly polemical."

And indeed as Henry went onto say.... 'it's never too late'.

Coverage in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/Greece

What can we say about the case for reunifying the Parthenon Marbles that has not been said a thousand times before? What more can we add to the numerous persuasive argumentsalready made for reuniting the dismembered components of Phidias's finest achievement? How many more times must we convene to reiterate the importance of restoring coherence to a work of art whose desecration at the hands of Lord Elgin damaged one of Greece's greatest gifts to the world?

The answer to these questions is that there will always be more to say about the case for reunifying the Marbles. There will always be new and ever more compelling arguments for reuniting them in Athens. And until that happens our generation and future generations will continue to convene and will go on reminding the British Museum of its moral duty to restore to these objects the dignity that Lord Elgin so rudely snubbed.The story the Marbles tell, is of a cultural moment that is a precious and irreplaceable part of our birthright as Europeans and the bedrock of our democratic ideals. That story loses much of its narrative charge while its components remain dispersed across different locations.

The Parthenon Marbles are more than just a work of art. They are more than a mechanism through which to increase the footfall of cultural tourism. They are more than a means by which to impose some meaning on the randomly accumulated collections of an encyclopaedic museum.

The reason the Parthenon Marbles transcend conventional museum categorisation is that they have the potential to demonstrate that in a time of global economic turmoil and geopolitical unrest cultural objects can unite us across national boundaries and remind us of our shared humanity. I say 'potential' because there is an irrefutable logic to the proposition that a united,coherent sequence of objects that speaks with such clarity of our shared background is more likely to foster unity among nations than a fragmented series of objects that continues to symbolise disunion and cultural rupture. For this process to begin, however, the dialogue between Greece and London must rise to a higher level based on mutual trust and generosity of spirit.

The Parthenon Marbles are unquestionably important within the cultural landscape, but they have become renowned for all the wrong reasons. While they should be celebrated for representing the zenith of the Periclean building programme of fifth-century Athens, instead they are more widely recognised as the most controversial and divisive objects in world culture. They should be peacemakers but we are not allowing them to take up that peacekeeping role. Thus they have become emblematic of the wider disputes between western museums and developing nations that have become known as the 'culture wars'. While the Marbles remain immured within the Stygian gloom of the Duveen Galleries where their true significance to European art and culture is so wilfully misinterpreted and misunderstood — our attempts to build harmony in the realm of cultural heritage will be impaired. The international museum community — but more specifically the British Museum — has the power to repair that rupture. The symbolic resonance of a unifying gesture of this kind could be profound and long-lasting.

Dr Tom Flynn

This extract is from a speech that Dr Tom Flynn made addressing a round table organised by the Swiss Committee for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles, held in the  European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium, on the 16th of October 2013.