Fig. 1. Parthénon pris du Temple de la Victoire, Aptère, et mur Pélasgique, photograph by unidentified artist, c. 1900 (Source: Harvard Art Museums)

Carved from white Pentelic marble and fixed to the temple of Athena at the Acropolis in Greece for 2200 years before their removal in the 19th century, the Parthenon marbles are perhaps some of the most universally admired pieces of artwork in the history of humanity. These marbles, now mostly on display at the British Museum in London, lie at the heart of an enormous controversy concerning the stewardship of art objects, rightful ownership and provenance, as well as the conservation of objects of significance to world cultural heritage. The temple of Athena is a hyper-intentional structure from its base to its decorative components. Its slightly bulbous pillars were designed to counter the optical illusion of sagging commonly created by large, rectangular architectural structures. Its sculptured marbles were produced by a team of highly trained artisans led by the master sculptor Phidias. Later, the temple was converted to an early Christian Church—the Church of Our Lady Athens—and then to a mosque during Ottoman occupation. In the 18th century, the temple was converted to an ammunition depot  and was promptly bombarded by the Christian Holy League in 1687, leading to the gutting of the temple and large-scale destruction that damaged the foundations of the temple. The next extremely consequential event in the Parthenon's history was the arrival of Thomas Bruce, better known as Lord Elgin, in Athens in 1800. When Lord Elgin arrived, Athens was then a province of the Ottoman Empire and Elgin a British Ambassador during the height of British influence in the empire. Leveraging this influence, Elgin removed a total of 17 figures from the Parthenon pediments, 15 metopes, 56 slabs of temple friezes, 1 caryatid column, 4 pieces of the Temple of Victory, 13 marble heads, other carved fragments, painted vases, sepulchral pillars, and inscribed albas from the Parthenon between the years 1801 and 1812. In 1816, an Act of Parliament acquired the marbles from Elgin on behalf of the British Museum, where they have since remained and been displayed.

Fig. 2. The Parthenon's pediment today, lacking its sculptural program. (Source: Shmuel Magal/Sites and Photos)

Between 1821 and 1830, Greece fought and won its independence from the Ottoman Empire. In 1832, Greece began a systematic restoration of the Acropolis, and in 1837, the Greek Archaeology Society was founded. Since then, the Greek government has continuously asked for reunification of the Parthenon marbles with the rest of Parthenon marbles at the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, a request which British officials and collectors have consistently tried to sweep under the rug. However, as a global political consciousness has continued to heighten, particularly in regards to the illicit collection of art objects during colonial eras, it has become impossible to ignore the problem of the origin and ownership of the Parthenon marbles.

In the 1800s, as national prestige became increasingly tied to cultural stock, the scramble to appropriate art and the idealization of the Parthenon marbles as part of a supranational classical heritage that the British were rightful inheritors of all served to justify the Parliament-backed acquisition of the marbles on behalf of the British Museum. Greek classicism became tied to an idea of correct visual culture, something that transcended historical national boundaries and eroded the claim of Greece to ownership of the marbles. However, with better modern-day frameworks for understanding national claims to objects of cultural heritage, the ethics of collection and curation, and more concrete international laws on art collection, it seems imperative to reconsider the British Museum's claim to owning the Parthenon marbles.

Fig. 3. The Parthenon marbles on display at the British Museum, London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles

Historians and collectors against the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles have argued that Lord Elgin, in acquiring the marbles, was acting to protect and conserve antiquity, that the British Museum is better equipped to protect the marbles and share the global aesthetic heritage they represent, that the acquisition of the marbles was in fact lawful, and that their current display at the British Museums serves to enrich global cultural heritage by locating the marbles at a locus of global travel and viewership. However, others have argued that these monuments are a part of Greece's natural national patrimony, that the acquisition of the marbles by Lord Elgin was fraudulent at best, and that these marbles are best displayed in context.

Though the former arguments for British stewardship of the Parthenon marbles may have been slightly more coherent during the time of Ottoman occupation of Greece, they make far less sense today in the context of modern-day geopolitics. Firstly, the language of cultural stewardship has been tied historically to imperial agendas—the rhetoric of protecting cultural goods in lieu of their rightful owner due to an incapacity of the owner to properly conserve these artifacts has been deployed time and time again by colonial powers to justify the spoilage and looting of archaeological sites. But regardless of whether or not such arguments for British stewardship of the Parthenon marbles on behalf of an Ottoman-occupied Greece could be viewed as historically legitimate or tenable justifications for the acquisition by the British Museums of the Parthenon marbles, it is undeniable that such arguments are more than incoherent in the 21st century. The New Acropolis Museum in Athens is an environmentally-intelligent architectural structure with state-of-the-art museum facilities, advanced lighting systems, and equipped well to conserve artifacts from the Parthenon (see Fig. 4). When compared with the British Museum's dimly lit hall of the Parthenon marbles removed by Elgin, decontextualized and sitting starkly and compactly against a bare wall clearly not designed to take into account the specific forms of the sculptured marbles (Fig. 3), the New Acropolis Museum stands out as having a certain sensibility that the British Museum does not—a major piece of which is the New Acropolis's attunement towards the importance of context. The displays at the New Acropolis Museum simulated the viewing angles of friezes and marbles had they remained in the Parthenon; natural light allows for marbles to be viewed in the environmental context in which they would have been seen prior to the Temple's destruction.

Furthermore, proponents of British stewardship of the Parthenon marbles imagine the marbles to be inheritances of a global cultural heritage rather than a specific national treasure of Greece; this argument has been used to undermine and delegitimize Greek claims to ownership of the Parthenon marbles. However, the idea of the marbles as supranational objects—as aesthetic objects which transcend specific historical and geopolitical contexts—is in itself an argument in service of British national agendas. Britain has a vested interest in positioning Greek classicism as a universal cultural heritage which Britain can also lay claim to—the inheritance of this cultural stock has been critical to shaping British national identity and British cultural & political hegemonies on the world stage.

Fig. 4. The New Acropolis Museum, Athens. https://www.slamp.com/en/news/la-traviata-at-the-acropolis-museum-in-athens/

Why have global cultural institutions such as the British Museum and the New Acropolis Museum been positioned as antagonists in this controversy, rather than coming together collectively to identify an opportunity to enrich global cultural heritage and leveraging the specific institutional advantages of each museum to amplify the cultural legacy of the Parthenon marbles? Rather than attempting to monopolize the Parthenon marbles to forward a national agenda, the British museum should (1) transfer ownership of the Parthenon marbles back to Greece, (2) collaborate with the New Acropolis Museum to work out a system of lending the marbles, such that they may be displayed at the British Museum for some regular period of time, (3) collaborate with the New Acropolis Museum to develop a better display framework to situate the marbles, when they are on display at the museum, in context, (4) explore technological and new media solutions to museum displays, and (5) explore technological and new media solutions to object separation, given that international lending of marbles may mean that the Parthenon marbles remain incomplete in situ for significant portions of time.

New media solutions to object separation and museum displays could take a variety of innovative forms. One possible solution, for example, is to situation physical marbles within holographic or virtual stagings of the complete temple, including virtual re-renderings of marbles which may be physically absent from the museum at hand due to the implementation of international lending programs. This technological solution is tenable for both the British Museum and the New Acropolis Museum; however, as proposed earlier, ownership claims to the Parthenon marbles should be held by the New Acropolis Museum, with any marbles on display at the British Museum only done so by loan and consent on the part of the New Acropolis Museum.

This proposal would bring together two major global cultural institutions in an unprecedented manner, to develop an innovative and modern approach to the conservation and ownership issues of the Parthenon marbles, in a way that maximizes global viewership of the marbles and emphasizes both a national claim by Greece to the Parthenon marbles as well as a global inheritance of the cultural and aesthetic legacy which the marbles embody.