The Parthenon Marbles (ctd.)

June 16 2022

Picture: BG

I was interested to see that the Chair of the British Museum trustees, George Osborne, said 'there's a deal to be done' on the Parthenon Marbles. Speaking to Andrew Marr on LBC he said:

“They’re an amazing testament to human civilisation. In the British Museum, they tell a story about civilisation compared to all the other civilisations, China, India, other parts of the Mediterranean. In Greece, they tell the story, just of Greek civilisation. I think there’s a deal to be done but I think there’s a deal to be done where we can tell both stories in Athens and in London.”

You can listen to the full excerpt here. The reason I think this represents a movement by the British Museum (or at least, its trustees) is that the BM has had a longstanding policy of being happy to loan the Marbles (or some of them) back to Greece for display, but Greece won't accept a loan because it would mean surrendering all claims to title. So ostensibly Osborne is signalling he's prepared to go beyond this. Perhaps some form of joint title would be appropriate, recognising their historical status?

It's also interesting that the UK government has repeatedly said this is a matter for the BM's trustees, rather than just outright say, 'the Marbles will stay in the UK', which is what you might expect from our current culture war-ing government. So, if the Trustees do decided to do something different, it's hard to see how the UK government could block them.

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