“The return of the Parthenon Marbles” – about a cultural challenge as underlined by an exhibition of the Melina Mercouri Foundation in Frankfurt a. Main, Germany

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

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Information about the exhibition:An exhibition organized by the Greek Culture Ministry and the Melina Mercouri Foundation on the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece was opened in the Frankfurt City Hall on January 19, 2006. It will stay open until February 5. The exhibition came about at the initiative of the network of Greek expatriate elected officials to local government posts in Europe.

The exhibition organizers aspire to brief the European citizens on Greece's demand shared by people around the world, and by Europeans, Britons included, for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to their place of origin.

The exhibition has acquired special interest after the recent positive development on the Parthenon Marbles issue when the University of Heidelberg stated that it intends to return part of the Parthenon frieze to Greece by the end of the year. Similar exhibitions were held in the past at the Council of Europe in Strasburg, the Megaron Music Hall in Athens, the European Parliament and UNESCO.

The brother of Melina, Spyros Mercouri, together with others, is behind this drive and created with his team in Athens the exhibition. At the opening in Frankfurt he pointed out above all, that:

“The Parthenon with its marble sculptures represents – independent of its unsurpassable beauty as art work – the symbol of democracy throughout the centuries. At the beginning of the 19th century Lord Elgin deconstructed without permission the marble sculptures of the Parthenon, broke them up in pieces and sold the fragments. The sculptures created by Phidias. The master pieces of the golden age. And thereby destroyed the ensemble of a unique temple. Lord Byron made following comment to such deed: ‘But the criminal will be hit by the curse of the Gods. Elgin lost much more than what he gained.’

The Melina-Mercouri-Foundation had the idea to organise and to realize together with the archaeological department of the Greek Ministry of Culture the exhibition with the title ‘The bringing together of the marble sculptures of the Parthenon – a cultural challenge.’

In our exhibition are shown in detail all the damages which Lord Elgin created. With different colours we indicate which parts of these sculptures can be found in the British Museum and which parts remained in Greece. In this way we want to make visible what is today’s condition of the Parthenon sculptures. We want to reveal the objective reality, the truth.

At first the visitor to the exhibition will feel anger and sadness. Out of this reason we have selected the title. For we want, that this justifiable demand of Greece becomes a world wide demand. We want, however, - as already often before – again emphasize, that we never had in mind to fetch all Greek treasures from all the museums in the world. We demand single and alone the bringing together of the marble sculptures of the Parthenon as a unique Temple-ensemble. It was the dream of Melina Mercouri. As she became in 1981 Minister of Culture, she initiated immediately an information campaign at international level.

She has achieved a lot. She mobilisized international public opinion. She made our demand, which is supported by international organisations, foundations and simple citizens, be known throughout the world.

And today it is a dream of all Greeks.

Melina Mercouri knew, however, also, that for the sculptures there must be created a new Acropolis Museum. For this reason there is being constructed now according to the highest standards for museums a new Acropolis museum. It will be completed within a short time. For us Greeks the Parthenon-Sculptures stand for our tradition, our civilization and our honour and symbolise democracy, whose cradle was found in Greece.”

The problem with this argumentation is the national tone accompanying a reasonable demand to restore the Parthenon frieze. For the cultural heritage of the Acropolis should not be treated merely as a matter of national cultural property. Rather it should be dealt with at the level of a truly world heritage, in terms of a common cultural heritage accessible to all people.

The British Museum has always been arguing as keeper of the marbles to do so in order to bring together all world civilizations. Even if the British position entails as well national undertones, the point of the Parthenon marbles being a world heritage should be taken into consideration, if they are to return to Athens and be kept in the newly to be constructed Acropolis museum. They must become a part of a larger embodiment of cultural heritage than what Greek culture of today seeks to define at national and patriotic level alone.

Furthermore, democracy is by all means not a self understood political system either then during the times of Pericles when slaves were kept nor is it now especially if the saying of Andreas Papandreou is recalled, namely there can be found only ‘democracy at gunpoint’ i.e. not out of free will but exposed to a subtle but also an overt system of coercion. Hence any allusion to a possible direct link between the democracy then and the kind of political system of today should be avoided, if the democratic self understanding is to be upheld over time. For instance, in its most recent history, Greece experienced after Second World War a terrible civil war and shortly thereafter the military Junta. Only after 1974 a new start of democracy was attempted but with many imperfections and shortcomings. The ongoing attempt by politicians to change every four years the constitution is an example for something deeply amiss. All the more reason to preserve Ancient Greek myth nor its cultural heritage by ensuring that they cannot be functionalised to serve as ideology of modern times.

Certainly Melina Mercouri was known for seeking continuity in time and history on the basis of ‘now as then’ but the continuity of democracy cannot be based on just keeping a myth about a past alive. True democratic life requires an active cultural life so that people are informed and can reflect upon different political options on the basis of a common reality. Being furthermore a part of the European Union, Greece can contribute insofar as this cultural heritage can be shared with the others as common base of European and world identity.

Indeed, the Parthenon marbles carry with them the significance of opening up future perspectives for Western Civilisation, if understood as the creative working together in freedom. Its uniqueness lies in its freedom from violence and coercion so as to let the human spirit express itself. The European member states and the European institutions can and should act in accordance with such a sense of a common cultural heritage. Only then can cultural heritage be considered to be an enrichment of what constitutes the daily lived reality in Europe and in the world.

The Olympics in Athens 2004 have certainly contributed towards ‘unifying the archaeological sites’ around the Acropolis. Now everyone can see the landscape of antiquity and image better from the parts left behind what was the whole spirit of that time. The ongoing work by Manolis Korres to restore in a painstaking process the Parthenon is also fascinating to watch.

In that sense the Acropolis museum can contribute to keeping this spirit alive, but in doing so, it must equalize the standards of the British Museum. This is only possible if the new Acropolis Museum becomes a keeper of not only the Greek cultural heritage, but opens up to a ‘World Civilizations in dialog with the ancient past’, and this with the Parthenon marbles not in London, but at the foot of the Acropolis.

The new Acropolis Museum

There was a lot of hope in Greece that with the coming of the Olympics in 2004, the Cultural Olympiade would be capped by the return of the Parthenon Marbles now kept by the British Museum. Alas even if the race to finish the Olympic venues was successful, in the case of the plans to have ready in time the Acropolis museum it was not. The British Museum had made this demand; they would only consider the question if there were in Athens appropriate conditions to house the sculptures, conditions which would mean no exposure of the sculptures to air pollution, something which has become something like a myth about Athens, but not London although in reality it might be quite the reverse.

The plans for such an Acropolis museum were quickly drawn up, but then the first, second and third architectural competition entangled the organisers in some far reaching controversies. The first one was disputed by the Greek architects who did not wish an international competition. The second one ended up selecting such a design which was completely unrealistic since it would foresee taking so much space that many surrounding houses would have to be torn down. There was no way that such an expropriation of the surrounding neighbourhood would go smoothly, rapidly and without endless legal fights. On the contrary, the neighbourhood went up in arms and got ready to fight every inch of the way. Naturally instead of insisting to build that architectural design, a third round of competition was called and once the jury decided, the process got under way to finally make a concept and dream become reality.

However, Greek reality being wherever you dig, you will find evidence of the past, likewise the case with the ground where the new Acropolis museum is to be constructed at the bottom of the Acropolis. Since the Archaeological society in Greece is a quite powerful body, naturally it meant still further delay until such solution could be found, namely to make the museum rest on stilts or pillars so that down below the revealed diggings can be viewed by visitors. Since then the construction has gone ahead. By now the ground floor is ready and the size of the building becomes evident.

The simulation model as depicted in the photo looks a bit different in reality, especially if you include the nearby houses which have now this enormous construction in front of their doorstep, balconies and physically speaking in front of their noses. There is hardly any space in-between them and the museum. If the museum would have been an industrial plant with high level of risk, the Seveso II directive of the European Union would foresee empty space must surround the building. Now, in terms of both expediency and exasperation no one heeds this aesthetical flaw but the museum alone due its scale is a monstrosity in the area and does not really fit since there is also a former hospital, now converted into the present and soon old Acropolis museum, which does not interplay at all well with this new construction made mainly out of glass.

Courtesy of Bernard Tschumi Architects

A museum designed by Bernard Tschumi will sit below the Acropolis and, Greece hopes someday hold the Elgin Marbles. As this third round of architectural competition, Mr. Tschumi, in partnership with the Athens architect Michael Photiadis, won the design competition with a smoothly modern, light-suffused entry. Mr. Tschumi beat out Daniel Libeskind, whose plan was composed of triangular forms, and Japan's Arata Isozaki, who proposed an egg-shaped building. "It came at one moment," Mr. Tschumi said of his scheme, "and nothing ever changed."

The museum will house hundreds of antiquities, but its true reason for being is the glass-walled gallery on the upper floor. There the marbles will reside if returned from the British Museum. This upper part is twisted 23 degrees from the floors below. The design intends to match the Parthenon some 300 yards away. The architect claims that once “arranged in an outward-facing rectangle, 21 by 58 meters, the sculptures would stand as they did 2,500 years ago”. Mr. Tschumi says, the location is used to link up with the Parthenon "as there is no other building which had a greater influence on Western civilization”.

Still, the question is whether such an architectural building should imitate the Parthenon as the latter had quite another function. In Ancient Times, the inner space of the Parthenon was a dark room with goddess Athena sitting on a throne in the middle of a pool filled with water and due to a light shaft in the ceiling reflected the Athenian light. By contrast the new Acropolis museum aspires for complete transparency in sole devotion to the Greek light while ignoring that darkness as receptivity of light from the outside comes much closer to what also Athenians do during their hot summer days, namely close the shudders in order to rest in the dark. Indeed, even those sculptures may need occasionally some shadow in order to close their eyes and rest for a while if only to step down at night and mingle amongst the crowd in the Plaka. This reminds of one fearful Athenian who thinks that it is not a good omen if all the sculptures are brought down from the Acropolis and put into the museum. This, he said, no one has dared to do until now, and except for Elgin and others who stole something from the Acropolis at their own fate and failure to respect ancient wisdoms.