It doesn’t take much nous to see what’s going on with the Elgin Marbles. After the PM’s affectionate chat with the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the other day, Sir Keir Starmer’s office has confirmed that the Government will not stand in the way of a deal between the Greek government and the British Museum for a long-term loan of the statues. It seems the Prime Minister regards the “care and management” of the sculptures as a matter for the museum.
The Chairman of the British Museum trustees is George Osborne, and he is thought to favour a long-term loan agreement as a way to settle the vexed issue of the actual ownership of the Marbles. You can see the way things are going. The museum’s Western Wing, with the Greek statues, is due to be renovated in the next few years. What could be handier than for the Marbles to be shipped off to Greece while their plinths are getting scrubbed?
A Greek official involved in the negotiations told The Times, “We are working on a broad and lengthy cultural agreement that would include an interchange and rotation of historical artefacts between Greece and the British Museum. That is what we mean by a win-win situation”.
If the Marbles go to Greece, they won’t be coming back
Can I put in a sentence what’s wrong with this “broad and lengthy cultural agreement”? It’s this. If the Marbles go to Greece, they won’t be coming back. The idea of “rotatation” and indeed “loan” suggests a return of the artefacts. But the Greeks won’t let the Marbles out of their hands once they’re installed in the Parthenon Museum.
I’m tempted to say that the trustees of the Museum would actually be losing their marbles if they nursed the smallest expectation that they’ll be getting the actual Elgin Marbles back for their nicely renovated Duveen Gallery. The Greek government has repeatedly made clear that it considers that the marbles were stolen; it would be unlikely that the Greek courts would take a different view if the British Museum under another generation of trustees tried to secure their return.
Once they’re gone, they’re gone. It may be that in the small print the legal ownership of the statues will remain with the British Museum but that won’t do it much good.
Given this reality, it would be wrong for the British Museum to agree a loan. As Sir Noel Malcolm observed in a brilliant analysis of the Marbles problem for the Policy Exchange think tank, (a new report for Policy Exchange), the museum can only make short-term loans for objects that are of compelling public interest – and the Elgin Marbles are about the most popular gallery – and it certainly could not responsibly make such a loan to Greece.
As far as the Greeks are concerned, The Marbles Are Coming Home.
Does it matter? You bet it does. The sculptures are not just very beautiful but are of exceptional importance, being the work of Phydias or Phidias, the most famous sculptor of the ancient world. I once heard Boris Johnson, classicist, speak movingly about how a visit to the Marbles changed his whole outlook, being in their humanity and pathos so very different from the stylised work of other cultures (I seem to recall he was a bit rude about the Assyrian artefacts).
You’re not going to get the Louvre returning the Venus of Milo
These are works that should be seen by as many people as possible, and the British Museum attracted 5.8 million visitors last year. Repatriating the marbles would be the most significant concession to the movement to return objects in collections back to their countries of origin. But you’re not going to get the Louvre returning the Venus of Milo.
Do the Greeks have a moral right to the Marbles? No. Remember, the Marbles wouldn’t be going back on the Parthenon, the temple of Athena. They would be going to a nice, air-conditioned museum near the site. More than that, the deal between Lord Elgin, the original purchaser of the marbles, and the Ottoman government – the so called firman – was scrutinised by a parliamentary Select Committee in 1816 and found to be valid. Once parliament was satisfied on this point it went ahead with an Act to purchase the Marbles for the museum and the nation for £35,000 (rather less than the £75,000 Lord Elgin said they had cost him).
The best-known scholar of the Elgin Marbles, William St Clair, discovered an Italian translation of the original agreement and it did indeed say that Elgin’s men should not be prevented from “carrying away some pieces of stone with old inscriptions, and figures”.
This is not to say that the British Museum has always been a good custodian of the Marbles. William St Clair established convincingly that the museum, at the prompting of that cultural charlatan, Lord Duveen (the one who shipped priceless European art to decorate the mansions of US tycoons); scraped the dirty old patina off them at the turn of the last century, which almost certainly damaged their surface. I’d re-christen the gallery with the marbles that bears his name. But at least in Bloomsbury the sculptures have been preserved from the vicissitudes of war and pollution.
Is there a solution? Not one that would satisfy the Athens government, but how about sending a full complement of plastercasts of the marbles to the Parthenon Museum? Casts are indistinguishable from the originals – see the brilliant (if badly displayed) collection at the Cambridge Archaeological Museum or the V&A’s wonderful Cast Courts. I’d say that we should have lots more casts galleries and museums.
There’s a serious moral case to be made against cultural tourism, partly for the environmental degradation visitors cause to the sites they visit, partly the climate consequences of all those air miles. If the Greek government would like a beautiful set of Parthenon casts they have only to ask.
Melanie McDonagh is a London Standard columnist
