People familiar with the Pareto principle, the rough correlation between 20 per cent of the inputs and 80 per cent of the outcomes, won’t be surprised to see it applied to the secretive machinations to transfer the Elgin Marbles from London to Athens. Reporting from “a source close to the negotiations” between the Greek government and the leadership of the British Museum, the Greek newspaper Kathimerini writes in fact that they “have reached an agreement that covers 80% of the issues. However, in relation to what remains, even the step for the additional 1% is not easy.” It looks like the remaining 20% of the negotiation is going to take 80 per cent of the time after all.
Of the three main hurdles named by the unknown source (they are always unknown, probably because of shame), two could potentially be resolved with the right amount of talking and an eventual agreement to meet halfway. One is the number of items that would need to go to Athens: the Greeks want as many pieces as possible to restore the unity of the monuments they already possess, with a marked preference for the pieces of the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon above everything else; the British Museum is not keen on a wholesale transfer. Even accepting a partial restitution, the Greeks are keen to maintain the ticket “open”, without relinquishing their claim to the remaining fragments. The other issue is the timing of the transfer: the British Museum would prefer to proceed cautiously, bit by bit, to see how the affair goes; the Greeks on the other hand, would like to see a substantial amount of sculptures reaching Athens in the shortest possible time, to obtain an undeniable PR success from the operation.
But the third aspect is the most thorny one, because it won’t allow a gradual solution, a sort of half measure, but only a binary choice: is it to be a loan or not? Yesterday, a report in The Critic suggested that George Osborne, head of the British Museum, is planning to give the Elgin Marbles to Greece “on loan” (the British Museum denies this). Yet the Greeks are adamant that calling it a loan doesn’t work for them, as it would imply a recognition of legal ownership over the sculptures by the British Museum. This would be unacceptable to the Greek public opinion, and it would transform a successful operation into an unequivocal political defeat. For the Greeks, accepting a loan would mean betraying the legacy of Melina Mercouri, and admitting that every time in the past two centuries they have accused Lord Elgin of looting the sculptures, this is not what they really meant. Dr Mendoni, the Greek culture minister who routinely accuses Elgin of “serial theft”, would have to resign in disgrace.
Yet, calling it a loan is the only thing that works for the British Museum, as the Trustees don’t have the statutory power to alienate any part of the collection except in a few, very specific, set of circumstances that couldn’t possibly apply to the Elgin Marbles. As it has been remarked numerous times, the only way to allow this to happen would be to change the law, and the Government has repeatedly confirmed that they have no intention of doing so. Chris Bryant, the arts minister, clarified during a Parliamentary debate on the subject held at the end of April that a loan is the only way, and that this has to work within the parameters set by the current law. Under these parameters, the trustees would have to seek an “open individual export licence” from the government, and this could only be issued if the government were satisfied that the Trustees “were absolutely certain that the items were returning”, which would not “be easy if they had arranged a permanent or indefinite loan”, like the one sought by some as a workaround solution. The Trustees must act within the statutory boundaries imposed on them and, to quote the minister once more, “if they do not, they will find themselves in court.”
As usual, we are at an impasse, which is often the case when someone obstinately insists on calling something what it is not. That the Elgin Marbles are legally the property of the British nation, entrusted to the care of the Trustees of the British Museum, is a fact. Thomas Bruce, the Scottish earl from whom the collection takes its name by law, obtained them by gracious permission of the legitimate and internationally recognised authority in Athens in 1801, the Ottoman Empire. Even his most acrimonious critics, such as Lord Byron, John Galt, or Edward Dowdell, confirmed this by mentioning the permission in their works. Two centuries later, coming from another country and another moral framework, we have no right to judge the Ottomans for granting it to Elgin, or to question their motives. To do so would be an act of colonialism and cultural imperialism far greater than the removal of the sculptures allegedly was.
The cultural justice warriors can simply stand down
Once we recognise that calling the removal theft, looting, vandalism, or plunder is just poetic exaggeration with no historical foundation and that maybe people in the past had every right to comport themselves according to their own moral compass, the idea of a cultural restitution of the Elgin Marbles to Athens as “righting historical wrongs” melts like snow in the Attic sun. There was no wrong, so we have nothing to put right. The cultural justice warriors can simply stand down. Linguistic and legal acrobatics become wholly unnecessary.
Addressing the fundamental flaw in the Greek claim is only part of the story, though. After all, the Greeks did so themselves in 2015, when the culture minister of the time went to the Hellenic parliament to declare that they were definitely dropping any idea of mounting a legal challenge for the Marbles in an international tribunal. If we want to be proactive in this fight, beyond refusing their demand, we also need to affirm why we should keep the sculptures. In my interpretation, it all boils down to one fundamental question: why do we keep museums up and running in the first place? My answer is that we need museums as places where we can protect, study, and communicate the material traces of the past, allowing each object to fulfil its potential as a vehicle of information on the human beings that came before us. Seen this way, a museum that honestly showcases the whole history and cultural implications of an object is inherently better than one that doesn’t. And a museum which hides part of the history of an object to support a predetermined ideological narrative is not even a museum.
Contrary to the simplistic claim that reuniting the surviving 60 per cent of the fragments of the Parthenon sculptures would be an act of respect for the monument, I contend that displaying them just in Athens would be a betrayal of their true essence as historical objects, their multi-faceted and adventurous story forcefully diminished and reduced to the simple act of their creation. While the Acropolis Museum focuses on Phidias and Pericles, using the sculptures of the Parthenon as props to illustrate the glory of Athens in the 5th century BC (and, in the eyes of the Greeks, also that of the 21st century AD), the British Museum has the ability to tell the multiple histories that have seen these sculptures as hubs of a network of ideas and cultural behaviours spanning all of the 2,500 years of their history, throughout Europe and the Western world.
If you can appreciate how much greater the usefulness of the Elgin Marbles in London is compared to their narrow scope in Athens, how much more respectful their presence in London is of what those objects truly are, you will also understand why the British Museum’s former director, Sir David Wilson, likened the idea of removing the Elgin Marbles from London to an act of “cultural vandalism”, “a much greater disaster than the threat of blowing up the Parthenon”. The British Museum is a cultural context itself, with objects entering its walls for precise cultural reasons, and their presence creating ripples in the cultural life of the nation (and way beyond it). This context, these reasons, these objects, and the stories of the men and women around them are our history, and we need to protect them.
Even if the Greeks are putting a great effort (and lots of EU money) into erasing every trace of the 1687 explosion that transformed the temple into a ruin, this act did happen, and did produce consequences, other acts in the infinite domino of history, like the removal of part of the neglected and endangered surviving sculptures to London. Sabotaging our own cultural history to enable another country to replace the History that happened with the history they would like to have happened is not an enterprise we should bend over backwards for.
