Greece’s New Prime Minister Wants Boris Johnson to Loan the Parthenon Marbles in a Bold Swap of Ancient Treasures

Greece’s new prime minister
intends to make a bold offer to his UK counterpart in an attempt to
end more than 200 years of stalemate over the Parthenon Marbles. If
Boris Johnson agrees to lend the precious sculptures in the British
Museum to mark the bicentenary of Greek independence, Athens will
in return lend ancient treasures never shown outside of Greece,
Kyriakos Mitsotakis told the Observer. 

The offer is unlikely to impress
the director and trustees of the British Museum, however, which is
an arms-length body not under the control of the UK
government. Additionally, the chance of Johnson being in power next
year is far from assured as he faces a growing rebellion within his
own party from MPs opposed to an abrupt exit from the European
Union. The leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, does support
the sculptures’ repatriation, although the odds of the Labour Party
winning a snap general election, should Johnson call one, seem
long.

Greece has made repeated bids
over the past four decades to reunite the sculptures in Athens but
the British Museum has long rebuffed these requests. Its director
Hartwig Fisher raised the hackles of the Greeks earlier this year
when he vowed that the
museum would never return the sculptures, and even suggested that Lord Elgin’s removal
of them constituted a “creative act.”

The sculptures at the center of
the long-running dispute formed part of the Parthenon frieze
created by the master sculptor Phidias in the fourth century BC.
Elgin, then the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed
around 260 feet of the masterpiece in 1802, which he later sold to
the British Museum. Only around 164 feet of the work remains in
Athens. Other fragments are scattered across various European
museums, including the Louvre in Paris, and the Vatican
Museums.

Meanwhile, Greece has also
petitioned France for part of the sculptures it holds in the
Louvre, a section depicting a centaur in confrontation with a
Lapith. Last week, Mitsotakis asked the French President Emmanuel
Macron, who promised to look into the matter.

In a notable change of tack for
Greece, Mitsotakis has acknowledged that the sculptures are part of
a shared heritage. “The Acropolis doesn’t necessarily solely belong
to Greece,” he said. “It’s a monument of global cultural heritage.”
However, he qualified his statement, saying: “if you really want to
see the monument in its unity, you have to see what we call the
Parthenon sculptures in situ,” referring to the purpose-built
Acropolis Museum in Athens. 

Mitsotakis is suggesting the
British Museum temporarily loan the sculptures in 2021, as part of
Greece’s celebration of 200 years of independence from the Ottoman
Empire. The center-right politician, who was elected in July, said
he plans to petition Johnson, who has a longstanding interest in
ancient history, having studied Classics at the University of
Oxford. 

Mitsotakis seems to have
overlooked Johnson’s previous suggestion that the
“acrimonious dispute” between the two nations might be resolved by
giving the Greeks an “indistinguishable replica” of the missing
parts of the frieze. Johnson seemed unaware that the Acropolis
Museum already displays casts of the pieces in the British Museum
and the Louvre.

Mitsotakis was careful not to
row back on Greece’s longstanding demand for permanent
reunification of the sculptures. “Of course, our demand for the
return of the sculptures remains in place,” Mitsotakis said, adding
that London’s attempt to keep the sculptures will eventually be “a
losing battle.”

A spokewoman for the British Museum tells artnet News that there
has not yet been any direct contact from the Greek authorities
regarding the proposal made over the weekend. “As an arms-length
body, this would be a matter for the trustees not the UK
Government,” she points out. She adds that the British Museum is
“committed to sharing its collection as widely as possible,” noting
that it lent over 5,000 objects to venues in the UK and
internationally last year. The museum has not lent a Parthenon
sculpture since it sent a sculpture of the river god Ilissos to the
Hermitage State Museum in St Petersburg to mark its 250th birthday
in 2014.

The post Greece’s New Prime Minister Wants Boris Johnson to
Loan the Parthenon Marbles in a Bold Swap of Ancient Treasures
appeared first on artnet News.