A projection of the Parthenon Caryatides onto the facade of the New Acropolis Museum. AFP

Acropolis now

June 20, Athens inaugurates with great fanfare the New Acropolis Museum. This avant garde building has provoked controversy and has reignited the long running dispute between Greece and Britain about the ownership of the Elgin Marbles.

Published on 19 June 2009 at 16:17
A projection of the Parthenon Caryatides onto the facade of the New Acropolis Museum. AFP

“What about you: you like the new Acropolis Museum?” people often ask – and sometimes it’s clearly a leading question. In the runup to its June 20 inauguration, the New Acropolis Museum has been sparking hefty differences of opinion, polarising friends, entrenching ideological and aesthetic camps, even triggering some slightly extremist reactions.

But all this public resonance is already a first victory for Franco-Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi and his Greek collaborator Michalis Fotiadis. Traditionally, intense reactions, though not always pleasant, mean an artist’s creation has eluded the worst fate to which any human activity can be condemned: indifference.

The closer we get to the inaugural evening, the more impassioned the polemic and the louder the hullabaloo over the sheer magnitude of the edifice and its integration into the picturesque centre of Athens. And just before the grand opening, whether by sheer coincidence or not, a conference is being held on the future of two buildings located in front of the museum: these “historic monuments” have been delisted for demolition or removal so as not to “spoil” the incomparable view of the museum on the holy rock of the Acropolis.

In all fairness, we should say that this new museum simply leaves many Athenians baffled. We have a hard time coming to terms with two different dimensions of the project. For one thing, there is the “patriotic” motive behind this ideologically charged project, whose first and foremost raison d’être is to house the ancient marbles of the Parthenon. This avant-garde building was erected to force the repatriation of the marbles, which were pilfered from the temple’s eastern frieze by the English ambassador, Lord Elgin, back in 1801, when Greece was under Ottoman occupation.

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For another thing, there is our traditional ambivalence toward architectural and urban innovations. Accustomed to small-scale edifices, we have a hard time cottoning to the “dominant” character of this new museum. But the history of Athens abounds in architectural “scandals”, often involving outsized constructions.

Ideas

A European cultural heritage policy

The new Acropolis Museum was built chiefly to accommodate the Parthenon marbles that have been preserved for 207 years now at the British Museum, recalls the Greek daily Eleftherotypia. “The museum in London refuses to gift them and is proposing a loan instead. Greece refuses the loan and claims ownership,” sums up the newspaper, adding that certain experts would leave it to the European Union to resolve the quarrel. So, too, ex-UK foreign minister David Owen: “The only way for the marbles to go from time to time to the new Acropolis Museum, which is desirable, is for the EU to authorise the exchange of antiquities between Member States. This is the occasion to show that there can be a European cultural heritage policy that can enrich the museums of the Union.”

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