“Return the Parthenon Sculptures. The British Museum has a lot of stuff anyway’ is the title of an opinion piece in the British newspaper ‘The Guardian’.

The article is signed by Simon Jenkins, Guardian columnist, author and BBC presenter, who notes that “these relics from the fountainhead of European civilization do not belong in a cold, gray room in Bloomsbury”.

‘Stupid’ controversy over Sculptures, Sunak acts like a child on the playground shouting ‘mine, mine’

The British newspaper’s columnist calls the dispute over the Sculptures “absolutely stupid” and likens Rishi Sunak to a child on the playground shouting “mine, mine”.

Jenkins writes: “He refuses a cup of tea with the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The official opposition leader laughs. The nation is yawning… Polls show that more than half are happy to see the Sculptures return and just over 20% want them to remain. Every civilized Briton knows that they should be exhibited where they belong, in their former home, Athens. But what fun it is to think of clever reasons why this should never happen.’

The Sculptures gazed out over the sunny Aegean from the Acropolis of Athens, now imprisoned in a cold, gray room, writes the Guardian columnist

“Sounak’s quest for a daily front page is becoming more and more frantic by the day,” writes the columnist, referring to Mitsotakis’ statement that the separated marbles are like the Mona Lisa cut in half, stating that “it may be an exaggeration.” .

But, he adds that “what for Britain is a boring dispute, for the Greeks it is a burning feeling of grievance that won’t go away. It is an asymmetric conflict.”

As the Guardian article states: “Of course Britain has legal title to the statues, but laws can change. Of course Lord Elgin probably saved them from destruction, although they were later damaged during cleaning. Of course their repatriation can set a precedent if you want to, but not if you don’t. It is true that more people see the marbles in London than in Athens, but they do not see them in their entirety. So what; We will not move the pyramids to London to have a bigger spectacle. The issue of the marbles is simply about the integrity of one of Europe’s greatest artistic compositions. These statues come from the source of European civilization in its most formative moment, in the 5th century BC. This fountain was on the Acropolis of Athens, gazing out over the sunny Aegean marbled from the adjacent mountain, and not imprisoned in a cold, gray hall in Bloomsbury.

It is true that reproduction can today allow the naked eye and the human brain to appreciate the beauty of the original in a copy. If the marbles were cast in copper, like the horses of St. Mark in Venice or the David in Florence, they could be copied again and again. The “cast yards” that brought European art to dozens of American museums in the 20th century were destroyed only by museum snobbery, which replaced wonder with the desire for authenticity.”

Guardian: Britain should have the dignity to return Sculptures – Instead, it’s humiliating itself

Jenkins then states that “science could satisfactorily replicate the Parthenon marbles in both Athens and London but for the Greeks – far more than any Briton – it is indeed a matter of authenticity. The Parthenon is their ancestral temple and the marbles their crown jewels. They really want them back. And surely a cultured country like Britain should have the dignity to obey. It has the power to restore the integrity of this amazing composition to the land of its creation. Instead, he humiliates himself by being mistaken for a cup of tea.’

“The involvement of the empire in these arguments rarely helps. But a post-imperialist arrogance has crept into the marble debate. Britain’s government is saying to the rest of the world: you may have got your independence back, but you’re not getting your stuff back. You Greeks, he seems to be saying, were too weak to stop the Ottomans from giving away your marbles, so this is tough on you. Britain may not have its empire, but it has the echo of an empire in the inviolable and “global context” of its British Museum. So tell the Greeks that they should be proud to see their heritage standing alongside the best of Africa and Asia. They should be thanking British taxpayers for being able to see them for free.

“These objects were not created to be locked away in a London basement”

The Guardian columnist notes: “The great collections of antiquity are more or less confined to a few large museums in Europe and America, products of the national aggrandizement of the 19th century. These institutions are fanatically reactionary. They want to deny newly formed countries the scope to acquire similar collections by refusing to make available or release their vast reserves. Many have stored the vast amount of their works as if they were the private property of their custodians. In the 1970s, the British Museum even declared that it was primarily a research resource for scholars.

None of these millions of objects were created to be locked away forever in a London basement. Most were made in faraway countries, whose citizens could be proud to display them in public. There is nothing sacred in a museum. It’s an unnatural place to leave thousands of objects frozen in time and place, vulnerable to theft and decay.”

And he continues: “The walls of museums are now collapsing ideologically if not physically. France has a major program of repatriation of imperial artifacts, whether looted or not. So does Germany. Despite security concerns, African bronzes are returning to Africa, ceramics to Southeast Asia, tribal treasures to Polynesia. This does not mean the death of the Louvre.

The director of the V&A, Tristram Hunt, this week presented a reform of the 1983 National Heritage Act which currently restricts some museums from “acquisition”. He wants them to grow up and take over their own business. The truth is that most museums have too much stuff, too much. They should distribute it to the rest of the world. The return of the Parthenon marbles may indeed be unprecedented and extraordinary.”