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Journalism of Courage
As Greece8217;s first Socialist culture minister in 1981,the late Melina Mercouri,a flamboyant actress best known for playing a golden-hearted prostitute in a film called 8220;Never on Sunday8221;,decided to make her mark in politics by campaigning for the return of the Elgin marbles from the British Museum BM.
Mercouri8217;s pleas to officials in London were ignored,but she scored two successes. First,the fifth-century-BC sculptures that Lord Elgin,a British diplomat,removed from the Acropolis temples in 1801-05 and later sold to the BM have become more widely known as the Parthenon marbles 8211; the name chosen by Mercouri to highlight where they came from. More important,her campaign added fuel to an international debate over who owns cultural property,whether ancient Greek or ethnic African,that has burned ever since.
The 130m 180.5m new Acropolis Museum,a stack of glass-and-concrete boxes designed by Bernard Tschumi,a Swiss-born architect based in New York,together with Michael Photiadis,his Greek associate,is uncompromisingly modern. Its glittering bulk,squeezed into a narrow plot beneath the Acropolis hill,contrasts sharply with shabby blocks of flats nearby and the pale-coloured rocky slope. Some Athenians complain it is simply too big for the site. Yet both Greek and foreign visitors seem delighted by the museum8217;s spacious,daylight-filled interior.
In the first-floor gallery,free-standing marble statues of men,women and horses glow against a background of grey concrete walls and columns. Floor-to-ceiling windows are made of thick crystalline glass embedded with mineral particles to cut out glare. Mr Tschumi says,8221;The marble reflects light,but the concrete absorbs it the use of daylight is fundamental to this museum.8221;
Glass floor-panels in connecting spaces illuminate an excavation in the basement of the museum soon to be opened to visitors of houses and streets in an Athens neighbourhood dating from early Christian times.
The caryatids,five larger-than-life-size female statues that supported a porch on the Erechtheum temple on the Acropolis,survey the museum8217;s lobby from an internal balcony. An empty space has been left for the sixth,which is in London.
Mr Tschumi8217;s showpiece is the top-floor Parthenon gallery,a cool glass box with a spectacular view that mirrors the dimensions and orientation of the temple itself. Below,projected on the wall,is a digitised video animation of elegant korai statues pictured above.
The frieze,a mix of honey-coloured marble panels and glaring white plaster casts of pieces in the BM,shows a procession of worshippers carrying offerings to Athena,the temple goddess. It is mounted at eye level on a grey concrete wall,an arresting display that could almost be an installation in a contemporary art show.
Dimitrios Pandermalis,the museum8217;s director,says,8221;We thought about leaving gaps for pieces that are in London,but we eventually decided that the casts would give continuity while making it quite clear how the frieze has been divided.8221;
By comparison with Athens,the BM8217;s display,which amounts to half the remaining frieze,and which was improved in 1998,now looks a little tired. Alexandros Mantis,a Greek expert on the ancient Acropolis temples,also points out that the frieze,which ran around the exterior of the Parthenon,is arranged in London around the interior of a gallery,which is architecturally and aesthetically wrong.
For the Greeks,criticised in the past for not having a suitable place to display the Acropolis sculptures,the inauguration of the new museum is the strongest possible argument for repatriating the marbles.
Moreover,it fulfils a widespread belief that architectural sculpture should be displayed as close as possible to the building it once decorated. Atmospheric pollution rules out placing the sculptures back on the temple itself. But the Parthenon gallery in the new museum is 300 metres and a single glance away from the temple.
However,Neil MacGregor,the BM director,is as passionate and as eloquent about keeping the marbles in London as the Greeks are about getting them back. Mr MacGregor argues that they have belonged to a unique collection for more than 200 years,in a museum that attracts more visitors than any other in the world,rather than just to one nation8217;s history.
An eventual solution 8211; though probably not one that will happen on Mr MacGregor8217;s watch 8211; would be to send the marbles back to Athens on loan and accept the Greek offer to provide a series of temporary exhibitions of classical art to fill the gallery. But that would require the Greeks to recognise British ownership of the sculptures in London,something Mr Samaras says would be 8220;impossible8221;.
With mutual prickliness running high,the stand-off looks set to continue. In the meantime,though,Athenians and their visitors can be proud of their stunning new piece of architecture,filled with indisputably great art.
The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009
