The Acropolis Museum celebrates the European Cultural Heritage Days 2024 with the thematic presentation ‘Health: tracing a universal and timeless good’. It is a journey into the world of health and wellness in antiquity, revealed to us by the relevant facilities in the ancient neighbourhood below the Acropolis Museum, but also by the multitude of objects on display in the newly established Excavation Museum.

Guided by the archaeologists of the Department of Educational Programmes, visitors trace the ancients' perceptions of health and wellness, the ways and means they used to take care of the body and soul, the science of wellness as well as the religious aspect they utilised to secure the most precious good. The programme is in line with this year’s pan-European theme ‘Tracing Routes, Networks and Links in Cultural Heritage’ and is part of the general spirit of the Council of Europe ‘Europe, a common heritage’.

Useful Information:

Sunday 29 September: 10 a.m. in English and 12 noon in Greek
Duration: 90 minutes
Registration: Limited to 20 persons per programme. Register online at events.theacropolismuseum.gr.
 

On the occasion of this year’s celebration, on Sunday 29 September 2024, from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m., entrance to the Museum exhibition areas will be free for visitors.

The new director of the British Museum, Dr Nicholas Cullinan in an interview with Richard Morrison for the Culture section of the Sunday Times, 15 September 2024.

“I’m going to lead the biggest transformation of any museum in the world,” Nicholas Cullinan declares. “Physically, our masterplan is a huge project. But intellectually, too, it’s an enormous challenge. Yes, fixing the roof is urgent. But if you’re going to address those physical problems you should also do something really exciting with the collections and the way we present them to the public.”

Music to our ears, as we have looked to the BM to embrace the 21st century and the continued call for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles.

Read the full article by Richard Morrison.

Post the 2,000 thefts, then the controversial 50 million pound donation from BP earmarked for the BM's masterplan with the transformation of the building and the campaign for reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, now in it's 41st year, is Nicholas Cullinan leading the way to a brave new era at the BM? 

The decision to digitise the whole BM collection, all eight million items means, in the future, if an item is stolen and offered for sale, it will be easy to check it against the BM’s database. “But it also gives us an opportunity to create an incredible website that could reach well beyond the museum’s walls,” adds Nicholas Cullinan.

Last month five architectural teams were shortlisted to work on rethinking the galleries that include the rooms housing the Parthenon Sculptures, Rosetta Stone and mummies. 

“It’s really a giant restoration project. The western range is largely the original Robert Smirke building from the 19th century, with its beautiful galleries. But they can be made even more beautiful. And at the same time we have to rethink how we navigate visitors round and best display and interpret the collection.” Continues Cullinan in the Sunday Times as he also points out that the 1963 British Museum Act stops the museum from deaccessioning anything in its collection, even if it wanted to. “The more interesting aspect to think about now is how we can work in partnership with other museums round the world to lend or exchange items,” he says.

The Sunday Times asks whether “a friendly lending agreement [would] end the seemingly eternal squabble over the Elgin [Parthenon] Marbles?” Cullinan responds: “This is not me trying to dodge the question but that issue is not within my purview. It depends on other parties…The more interesting aspect to think about now is how we can work in partnership with other museums round the world to lend or exchange items.”



 

Five architectural teams have been selected to take part in the final stage of a design competition to redesign galleries at the British Museum in London. The international competition received more than 60 applications from across the world in its first stage. The design entries, which will  go on display in the museum’s Round Reading Room from December.

A judging panel will select the winning team early in 2025 – this team will then work with British Museum staff to develop designs for the Western Range of galleries  with a brief to “respond to the museum’s sensitive historic buildings, ambitious decarbonisation plans and the ongoing process of reimagining the display and care of collections”.

The Western Range includes  galleries on the western side of the museum that collectively make up a third of the British Museum’s gallery space, and house high-profile parts of the collection such as the Parthenon Sculptures as well as objects from Ancient Egypt and the Middle East.

Read the full article in the Museum Association news.

Eleni Cubitt, founding member of BCRPM at the British Museum, photographed by Nana Varveropoulou for LIFO Magazine in November 2009 . 

What makes today special? Monday, 19 August 2024, is full moon day and there is free entrance to a selection of archaeological sites and monuments in Greece.

The official poster pictured above produced by Greece's Ministry for Culture quotes Sappho and Anne Carson's book 'If Not, Winter - Fragments of Sappho' aptly translates the words as:

full appeared the moon.

The Acropolis Museum in Athens and its restaurant will also open from 8pm until midnight as the celebrations for this August full moon also include a concert by the historic Hellenic Air Force Band performing Greek songs about the moon, film score music and renowned melodies.

The concert will take place in the museum’s entrance courtyard at 9pm. 

The Hellenic Air Force Band is formed by senior and junior officers, high-level musicians who studied at various conservatories of Greece and were admitted into the ranks of the Air Force.

The band takes part in worldwide music festivals including New York's 5th Avenue parade dedicated to Greece's March 25th celebrations.

Major Alexandros Litsardopoulos is the conductor of the band. The singers that will perform are Sofia Zova and Angelos Mousikas.

A letter from Cambridge

A documentary from the journalist Bruce Clark about the Parthenon Marbles

“What about the British classicists of our times? Do they study the Athenian past in a spirit of acquisition and ambition or of friendship and respect? I am glad to say that when I last went back to my old place of learning, things seemed to have changed for the better…”

The observation comes from the journalist Bruce Clark, and it offers a first response to the question which is posed in a short documentary, “From Cambridge with Love: A Call to Mend the Parthenon’s Broken Treasures” which Kathimerini has seen.

However the author and former international security editor of the Economist, who is a Cambridge graduate himself, does not return to his alma mater with the sole purpose of finding out whether old-fashioned mentalities have been set aside.

“Public opinion in the United Kingdom is in favour of reunifying the marbles,” Clark told Kathimerini, “but it is not completely well informed about what exactly the sculptures are, or about the role they played in the civilization of ancient Athens – or about the fact they constitute a single work of art. The idea of the documentary was to inform the public more deeply about the sculptures, about the mysteries they contain and the unresolved scholarly debates they have stimulated – as a way of promoting their eventual reunification.”

The British classicists – and members of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles - whom Clark meets in the film are Paul Cartledge, an emeritus professor of Cambridge University and Edith Hall, a professor of ancient Greek literature at Durham University.

As Clark – who is also a member of the BCRPM – says in the documentary, “[both] helped me to understand one overwhelming fact – all the brilliant cultural products of fifth century Athens reflect the wave of democratic energy which cascaded through the city – that tiny, talented place – after its victory against the huge Persian empire…”

The film alludes to the democratic way in which the construction of the Parthenon was overseen – and also to the frieze which represents the whole population of the city. The “mystery” which stirs debate around the frieze concerns the so-called peplos scene - which might, according to some scholars, show Erechtheus, the first king of Athens, handing over a death-shroud to his daughter, foreshadowing her self-sacrifice for the good off the city.

“It is an unresolved scholarly question,” Clark tells Kathimerini – “just like the question of whether the frieze depicts the Panathenaic procession as it happened at that time, or some idealized notion of the procession in the past.”

The majority of the frieze is, of course, in the British Museum.“The presentation of the frieze is particularly damaging,”   Paul Cartledge explains in the film, “because the designers of that [BM] gallery try to pretend that they have the whole of the frieze when in fact they don’t…” Edith Hall puts it this way: “You might say it’s like trying to read a comic with the pictures in a random order.” 

And the British sculptor Helaine Blumenfeld, who also appears in the documentary, adds that “the most tragic thing for a sculptor is to create a work for a particular place and then find that it’s going to be moved…”

“From Cambridge with Love” – jointly created by Clark and producer Leonidas Liambeys – will make its first appearance in the Ninth “Beyond Borders” Documentary Festival in Kastellorizo. The main conclusion could be summed up in a remark made by Clark to Kathimerini: “It doesn’t require a brilliant brain to see that if there is one single place where the sculptures should be, it is the Acropolis Museum.”

Does Clark have hope that the advent of a new government will make things easier? “The very fact that there is a new government is a sign of hope,” he responds. “We understand that the Labour government will not stand in the way of any deal made by the British Museum – however they do not plan to change the law.  They are at least giving the Museum some room for manoeuvre. I think, though, that some legislative amendment will be needed.”

From Cambridge With Love will be shown at the International Documentary Festival in Kastellorizo on 26 August at 8.30 pm.

Article written by Nikolas Zois for Kathimerini and published on 14 August 2024

Published today, another YouGov poll, sample size:4869 GB adults surveyed, and only 17% believe the Parthenon Marbles currently in the British Museum should be kept in Britain. A tiny minority of the adults surveyed. Good to also see support for the reunification remains strong albeit 26% 'don't mind either way' and 9% 'don't know'. 

The results for region, gender, politics, age and social grade also of interest, to view them all, follow the link here.