Acropolis Director Urges Louvre: Return Your Parthenon Marbles

A conception of the Parthenon Frieze successful the Louvre. Credit: Public Domain

The General Director of the Acropolis Museum, Nikolaos Stampolidis, combined a connection of solidarity with a wide telephone for the instrumentality of the Parthenon Marbles, pursuing the recent heist astatine the Louvre Museum successful Paris.

“I privation to privation our French friends and the Louvre Museum good successful their efforts to retrieve the stolen relics. At the aforesaid time, however, the Louvre indispensable recognize that it owes it to the Acropolis Museum to instrumentality the Sculptures that are successful its collection,” Stampolidis stated during a tv interrogation connected ERT connected Wednesday morning.

The caput of the Acropolis Museum made his comments conscionable days aft quality of the large theft astatine the Louvre, which has caused aggravated interest wrong the planetary depository community. His connection simultaneously brings the long-standing contented of the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, and each Greek antiquities successful overseas museums backmost to the forefront.

The Louvre’s Parthenon Marbles and their acquisition

The Louvre presently holds a tiny fig of Parthenon Marbles, specifically a artifact of the East Frieze and 1 Metope (South Metope 10).

These pieces were acquired by the French diplomat and collector Count de Choiseul-Gouffier successful the precocious 18th century. Unlike the larger postulation removed by Lord Elgin, these pieces were chiefly escaped fragments recovered successful the rubble astir the Parthenon. After Choiseul-Gouffier’s death, the Louvre purchased the Metope successful 1818.

Critique of the British Museum Gala

In the aforesaid interview, Stampolidis addressed the contention surrounding the recent gala held by the British Museum successful the assemblage wherever the Parthenon Marbles are exhibited.

He clarified that “the contented is not whether events should oregon should not beryllium held successful museums.” He emphasised that what is peculiarly important is “the mode successful which specified events are carried out. Greek civilization has ever been a civilization of crushed and dialogue, not of dogmatism.”

Regarding the resulting uproar, Stampolidis explained: “In this peculiar case, those who privation to go meal guests of the gods should not, successful my opinion, spot an ill-conceived oregon well-conceived table—depending connected however 1 sees it—directly beneath the feet of the pediments, oregon spot their glasses there, arsenic I saw successful the images. It is insulting not lone to the works themselves and the museum, but besides to those participating.”

A telephone for a “noble gesture”

Finally, Stampolidis offered a portion of proposal to those of economical and intelligence stature, stating that they “should expend their efforts connected noble issues, specified arsenic the instrumentality and reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures.”

He stressed that the sculptures indispensable beryllium reunited with the assemblage to which they belong, noting: “Every enactment has its dynamic precisely wherever the powerfulness it emits was born. The Parthenon is not conscionable for Greeks. It is for each humanity.”

Stampolidis called “once again for some the British Museum and the British people, who are mostly successful favour of the instrumentality and reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures, to beryllium capable to marque this noble motion and for each of america to reunite the monument, a awesome of ideology and aesthetics.”