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Who owns the Parthenon sculptures?

The Parthenon sculptures in London's British Museum showcase the High Classical style of ancient Greece. Controversy surrounds their removal from Athens by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century. The debate focuses on whether these sculptures should be returned to Greece, as they symbolize both national identity and global culture. The British Museum serves as a universal museum, promoting cross-cultural understanding. Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris.

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  • marcimus purple style avatar for user Liberty Ackroyd
    Dumb question, why are they all headless or missing limbs? Is it because they are old or have the limbs been lost over time?
    (41 votes)
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    • aqualine tree style avatar for user David Alexander
      This is not a dumb question. In fact, I've given you an upvote! Heads rest on necks. When one carves a statue, the thin places with heavy stuff on top of them are more fragile, and more likely to break. The same is true of arms. Beyond that, heads and hands make really neat souvenirs for the many armies and soldiers who have been through the region under loose supervision over the centuries.
      (27 votes)
  • piceratops ultimate style avatar for user danica
    why cant they just rebuild it if they have all pieces? i mean even if they don't have all pieces. can they still rebuild
    (9 votes)
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    • starky tree style avatar for user DanielleMegan
      If they rebuild it with non-original pieces, they'll inevitably change the statue, even if they make it as accurate as possible. They could rebuild, but it would take away from the value of the art. One of the powerful things about the Parthenon sculptures is their age and that they have remained unchanged (aside from damage).
      (9 votes)
  • boggle purple style avatar for user zthechildcatartist
    This may be kind of dumb but,Why do some of the sculptures have missing heads or limbs
    (8 votes)
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    • aqualine tree style avatar for user David Alexander
      Statues that have been carved from stone, and then are exposed to weather for centuries, get cracked. Necks and arms are "thin places" where cracks happen because they can't bear the weight, so heads and arms fall off first. Then, they make attractive things for people like explorers and soldiers to carry home.
      (7 votes)
  • male robot hal style avatar for user KEVIN
    If the sculptures were returned to Greece, would the government attempt to reinstall them or would they be housed in a museum? Has this been discussed at all between the Greek and the British governments/ authorities?
    (8 votes)
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  • leafers ultimate style avatar for user mileio
    Claiming the plundering of cultural heritage was legal at the time is a terrible argument because the damage it creates is not limited to the time when the artworks were stolen, every generation of Greeks that grows up having to travel abroad to experience an important part of their own culture is hurt by the decision of England not only to steal them but not to return them.
    (8 votes)
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    • aqualine tree style avatar for user David Alexander
      Affirmed. You are 100% correct. But now that the crime has been committed, how can remediation be done? The British museum should return the Parthenon sculptures and a lot of other stuff to competent authorities in Greece and in other nations around the world, and put plaster casts and 3D printed versions of the stuff into the galleries in London, or use that space to house homeless people and refugees. Do you agree?
      (5 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user ccs.emoke
    If the British Museum stands for universal culture, shouldn't it be renamed?
    (8 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user sydneykollm98
    Why would the Greeks take some art work back to where they live without giving there stuff back where they got it from?
    (6 votes)
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    • blobby blue style avatar for user lilhuddy
      It was different back then. The Greeks could take stuff and not think anything about it. They didn’t have any laws forcing them to give works of art back to people. Even if they did, the Greeks had really big egos, they probably wouldn’t have given them back anyways.
      (5 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user T'kyra Hunter
    Why he didn't have no choice but to sell it to the English government?
    (5 votes)
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    • aqualine tree style avatar for user David Alexander
      He had spent all of his money removing the sculptures and other materials, and transporting them to the UK. He didn't have the money either to store them in the UK or to display them or anything. He had to sell them. Since he had abused his power as a servant of the government to steal these things, and the Ottomans would not pay him to get them back, it was either sell them to the government or throw them away.
      (4 votes)
  • blobby blue style avatar for user lilhuddy
    How long has David Alexander been working at Khan? He seems to answer a lot of questions.
    (6 votes)
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  • stelly yellow style avatar for user annavaldouglas3
    - Why did they word it like that? They said “Ancient Egyptian art” and then proceeded to say “Art from Africa” - I feel like this happens a lot, Egypt being portrayed like it’s separate from the continent Africa. I know this is probably nothing but I just think it’s kinda strange
    (4 votes)
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    • aqualine tree style avatar for user David Alexander
      You are absolutely right. Sometimes it seems like "Africa" is used as a shorthand for "sub-saharan Africa" and doesn't include places like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya or Egypt. I recall having an interesting conversation about this with a guy when I once pointed out to him that the story character, Moses, was an African. He couldn't wrap his head around that.
      (3 votes)

Video transcript

(gentle music) - [Steven] We're in London at the British Museum, standing in a gallery devoted to the sculpture of the Parthenon. - [Beth] This is a gallery that was designed to house these sculptures which arrived at the British Museum in the early 19th century. Now we're looking at some of the most revered sculpture in all of Western art. - [Steven] These sculptures were seen as the High Classical style that for hundreds of years we believed we could only hope to re-achieve. These sculptures and the building that it came from the Parthenon, are more than 2,000 years old. But the controversy of how these sculptures ended up in London is more than 200 years old. - [Beth] What we're looking at are sculptures that are divorced from the building that they came from, the Parthenon. - [Steven] But they were integral to it and it's impossible to divorce the meaning of these sculptures from their original context. - [Beth] Let's spend a minute looking at one of the panels from the frieze of the Parthenon and why these sculptures and this classical moment of ancient Greece have been so revered in Western art. The sculptures on the frieze depict a procession, mostly of horses and riders. - [Steven] And look at the naturalism here. The artists have been examining the anatomy of the nude male, but also of the horse. Look at the way in which the man's thigh bulges out as it presses against the horse. You can see the concavity of the hip bone. Look at the way that the artist has carefully depicted the twisting of the body. The legs are moving forward, but the chest turns to face us. - [Beth] We can see the ribcage, we can see the muscles in the abdomen, the muscles in the shoulders and the arms. That love of anatomy that we know from ancient Greek art. Whereas the horse on the right rears up and has a sense of passion and energy, the human figures have a calm nobility. - [Steven] After the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte seizes power. France had been expanding it's territory, but under Napoleon, it begins a campaign to conquer much of Europe. - [Beth] It's against this background that the sculpture in this room is taken from Athens and makes its way to London. The other important context here is the interest in ancient Greek and Roman antiquities that just explodes in the 18th century. You have Napoleon not only conquering territories but bringing scholars with him to help him identify important works of art, important monuments, that he brings back to France to fill the new Musee Napoleon which becomes the Louvre Museum. So you have this competition among European powers for the great works of classical antiquity. - [Steven] So the man responsible for bringing these sculptures from Athens to London, Lord Elgin, was a Scottish nobleman. And he received an extremely important diplomatic mission. He became ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. - [Beth] And he became ambassador at a critical moment when the British had just won a decisive battle in Egypt so the balance of power shifted away from France. - [Steven] So for the Ottomans, the French were out and the British were in. And Elgin was the primary representative of the British Crown, which gave him tremendous power. Now from the beginning Elgin imagined that he could help develop the arts of Britain. - [Beth] And what better way to do that than to furnish the British public with examples of this great moment in Western sculpture, the sculptures from the Parthenon. His first idea was to create copies, to make molds and to have artists draw. His motivation was certainly personal in terms of decorating his home in the antique style, but it was also generous, it was also educational. - [Steven] He asked the British government for funding to help support this artistic endeavor. They declined, but Elgin went ahead anyway and he hired a team that he sent to Athens. Now the building had a long, complex history and was built as a temple to the goddess Athena, but then it had been turned into a church and eventually it had been turned into a mosque. But the Ottomans also stored gunpowder there and when they were attacked by the Venetians the building exploded. - [Beth] Leaving debris across the Acropolis. When Elgin's team wanted to begin their work they encountered some problems from the local Ottoman authorities. And so they asked Elgin back in Constantinople to secure for them a firman or a permit which would allow them to do the work on the Acropolis. The very first firman or permit doesn't survive but the second firman has come down to us in translation. It describes what Elgin's men were allowed to do. It says. - [Steven] They were allowed to draw and they were allowed to cast, they were allowed to erect scaffolding. - [Beth] And they were allowed to excavate. But the critical passage of this firman or this permit reads, "No one should meddle with their scaffolding or implements nor hinder them from taking away any pieces of stone with inscriptions or figures." And it's that last phrase that reads somewhat ambiguously. What happens is Elgin's men see an opportunity, through cajoling, through bribery, through using the power of Elgin's office to extend the interpretation of this firman enough to allow them to take sculpture from the Parthenon itself. - [Steven] And the act of removing the sculpture was necessarily an act of destruction. - [Beth] This is a difficult and expensive endeavor and Elgin is laying out his own money to do this. - [Steven] In fact, he's borrowing to be able to afford this project. - [Beth] He took 247 of the 524 feet of the frieze. He took 15 metopes out of 92 and he took 17 sculptures from the pediment. Now we're just talking about sculptures from the Parthenon, there were many other things that he took. - [Steven] By this time he was in deep debt and he offered to sell the sculptures to the British government. - [Beth] He basically had no choice. Even storing them was enormously expensive. - [Steven] The British government convened a parliamentary commission to investigate the circumstances of the acquisition and to determine the quality of the sculpture and to settle on a price. - [Beth] Ultimately the government did decide that the sculptures were acquired legally and they paid Elgin 35,000 pounds, less than half of what he estimated his own costs to be. - [Steven] But from the very beginning, there was real criticism leveled against Elgin for removing the sculptures from Greece and for the destruction that that necessarily caused. - [Beth] And soon after the arrival of the Elgin marbles here in Britain, Greece finally achieves independence from the Ottoman Empire and these sculptures and the Parthenon itself and the buildings on the Acropolis, become a symbol of national identity for the Greeks. - [Steven] And the Greeks ask for the marbles back. - [Beth] So where does that leave us today? The argument that Elgin's actions were illegal. - [Steven] Although his critics state that in fact he exceeded his legal authority, there's also the argument that is persuasive for many, that Elgin although doing damage to the building and to many of the sculptures ultimately preserved the sculptures. - [Beth] Before Elgin got there, the French were taking sculptures from the Parthenon. So you have not only the French taking things, you have tourists who are picking things up off the Acropolis or buying things from local inhabitants. Everyone wanted a piece of the monuments on the Acropolis. - [Steven] But the counter-argument there is strong also, Elgin actually destroyed the temple in part to remove the sculptures. The sculptures themselves suffered and in a number of cases were exposed to seawater. And the British Museum does not have an unblemished role in protecting the sculptures either. In the early 20th century, they were responsible for an overzealous cleaning. - [Beth] There's also another argument that's often made that if the marbles were sent back, it would have a kind of ripple effect and so many of the objects that are in encyclopedic museums in the West, like the Louvre, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, like the British Museum, would also need to be sent back to their place of origin. - [Steven] The Greeks have built a beautiful modern museum designed especially to house these objects. - [Beth] And we could finally have the opportunity to see them all together. - [Steven] If they were returned, we would also see them closer to their original context, we could look out those magnificent glass windows to the Acropolis itself to see these objects in that brilliant Mediterranean sunlight. - [Beth] Another critical argument made for keeping the sculptures here is that the British Museum is a universal museum. - [Steven] And so here it's possible to compare ancient Greek art with ancient Assyrian art, with ancient Egyptian art, with art from East Asia, with art from Africa. And there is real benefit to that. - [Beth] You could say that the collections of the British Museum promote tolerance and cross-cultural understanding. That we understand the objects in the British Museum as being owned by humanity broadly. - [Steven] Except that it just happens to be in the capital of one of the world's great former empires. - [Beth] And an empire that committed violent acts against its colonies. And while the Greeks make the argument that the sculptures are a central part of Greek identity, there are those that argue that the Greeks of ancient Athens are completely different Greeks than the Greeks of the modern era. - [Steven] But the Parthenon is distinct and it's different in part because it's not only deeply important to the Greeks, it has become deeply important to American culture, to British culture, to French culture, to a kind of global culture. What the ancient Greeks did in Athens in the 5th century has had the most profound impact on modern society that this culture has been embraced universally. The classical art historian archeologist Mary Beard puts this just beautifully. - [Beth] She wrote, "The debate that surrounds "the Elgin Marbles forces us to face the unanswerable "question of who can, and should, own the monument. "Can a single monument act as a symbol both of nationhood "and of world culture?" So how do we reconcile the universal meaning of these sculptures, the meaning that we've given them, that these sculptures stand for democracy. - [Steven] And for the nobility of humankind. - [Beth] How do we balance that with the fact that it was indeed the Greeks who made this incredible contribution to Western civilization? (upbeat piano music)