BCRPM congratulate the British Museum for the hugely successful 'Rodin And the Art of Ancient Greece' exhibition (26 April - 29 July 2018) and Janet Suzman, BCRPM's Chair, adds that this is the right time to consider reuniting the sculptures from the Parthenon in the Acropolis Museum.
12 April 2018, Philip Stephens wrote in the Financial Times:
The west's great museums should return their looted treasures.
He refers to the case of the Parthenon Marbles: "To my mind, it also seems perfectly obvious that Lord Byron was right and the Parthenon sculptures belong to Athens, whatever the deal struck by Lord Elgin and the then Ottoman rulers of Greece. I concede, though, that this is a dispute with some way to run. But "hard" cases should not be allowed to obstruct just settlement in instances of egregious looting. The wider debate may not go away, but restitution in these cases would take the museums on to higher ethical ground."
23 April 2018, Donald Lee for the Art Newspaper, wrote:
Rodin's debt to Parthenon sculptures explored in British Museum exhibition.
In the exhibition Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece, the British Museum makes clear Rodin's close study and use of the museum's own ancient Greek art for the development of his sculpture.
To read the full article, click here
24 April 2018 , Melanie Mcdonagh writes in the Evening Standard
Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece Reviewed. The master sculptor meets the Greek greats at the British Museum.
If ever there were an exhibition that plays to a museum's strengths, it's this one. Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece is about the artist's obsession with Greek statuary in general and the Elgin Marbles in particular. So the exhibition is a kind of dialogue between Rodin and the artefacts of the museum, which he first visited in 1881 and loved.
24 April 2018, Jonathan Jones writes in the Guardian:
British Museum, London
The Frenchman made some of the best loved sculptures in the world. But his magnificent work is still no match for the Parthenon Marbles. My god, what art!
26 April 2018, Michael Glover also reveiwed the Rodin exhibition in the Independent. He wrote that there's 'a lovely, easy panache to this show'.
26 April 2018, the Greek Ambassador in London, H E Dimitris Caramitsos-Tziras wrote to Hartwig Fischer, Director of the British Museum, you can read his letter here.
28 April, 2018, Hettie Judah's article entitled: 'Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece, British Museum, review: remarkably handsome and unabashedly sensual'.
The exhibition is not so gauche as to explicitly suggest the influence of the Elgin Marbles on Rodin as any kind of rationale for keeping them at the museum – more it acknowledges the regard in which they were and are held by artists, and the influence they have had on Western European sculpture.
To read BCRPM's press release, visit here.
