A bunch of high-profile figures, together with the previous UK Prime Minister Liz Truss, has written a letter criticising what it claims is an “accelerating” marketing campaign to return the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to Greece.
The letter, which is addressed to the trustees of the British Museum and the UK authorities, requires an finish to any negotiations to ship again the sculptures, alleging that “this motion to take away [them] is just not natural. It’s politically orchestrated, closely financed, and more and more shrouded in secrecy”. The letter later claims: “Such secrecy could symbolize a breach of the fiduciary duties owed by museum trustees to the general public.”
Different signatories of the letter—which claims the Marbles “are British owned and will stay on the Museum for the advantage of its guests”—derive from the worlds of politics, academia and the humanities together with the historian David Starkey and Michael Daley, the director of Artwatch UK. In line with the Guardian, the letter was printed by the hard-right marketing campaign group Nice British Pac, which is led by the Conservative activist Claire Bullivant and the previous Reform deputy co-leader Ben Habib.
The marbles have been housed within the British Museum since 1817, arriving there after being faraway from the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis in Athens by the Scottish nobleman Lord Elgin, the then ambassador to the Ottoman courtroom. In 2022, George Osborne, the chairman of the British Museum, mentioned there’s a “deal to be carried out” over sharing the Parthenon Marbles with Greece.
The Nice British Pac describes itself on-line as “a coalition of enterprise leaders, politicians, attorneys, police chiefs, journalists, patriots, and activists from all walks of life, united by a shared love for our nation and a dedication to its future… the Nice British Pac is dedicated to safeguarding the UK from Labour’s reckless coverage proposals.”
The letter means that signatories could search authorized motion to forestall the Marbles’ return. “We reserve the suitable to hunt authorized recommendation on how greatest to guard the pursuits of the British public, of their capability as beneficiaries of the Museum’s belief, together with by pursuing an injunction to halt any ongoing or future negotiations till the beneficiaries have been totally knowledgeable and correctly warned of the potential dangers and opposed penalties of such actions,” it says.
Dan Hicks, a curator on the Pitt Rivers Museum and professor of latest archaeology on the College of Oxford, instructed The Guardian: “This letter is a determined culture-warrior train in scaremongering and intimidation developed by undefined political actors.”
He added: “Worldwide loans have been a standard a part of the operation of museum exhibitions for greater than a century. To provide only one instance, the British Museum itself would be the recipient of a high-profile mortgage from France subsequent yr when the Bayeux tapestry will probably be placed on show.”
Talking to The Artwork Newspaper, the archaeologist Mario Trabucco della Torretta, one of many letter organisers, alleges that restitution claims such because the one surrounding the Marbles are “animated” by “distortions of the historic proof”. He provides: “These claims are routinely primarily based on choice bias, patent anachronisms, and thoroughly edited quotations of the sources. The cultural coverage of the nation can’t be primarily based on this type of unscrupulous use of the proof. That the Marbles had been acquired legally is an uncontestable historic truth.”
The letter cites the Parthenon Mission—which campaigns for the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures—in the meantime as “lavishly funded by a international industrialist”. Sky Information stories that the web site of the lobbying group—whose supporters embody the actor Stephen Fry and former Conservative minister Ed Vaizey—lists Greek plastics magnate John Lefas because the chief of the organisation. The Parthenon Mission was contacted for remark.
The newest assertion on the Parthenon Marbles posted on the British Museum web site says: “The trustees of the British Museum consider that there is a nice public profit to seeing the sculptures throughout the context of the world assortment of the British Museum, with a purpose to deepen our understanding of their significance inside world cultural historical past. This offers the best complement to the show within the Acropolis Museum.”
A 1963 act of parliament additionally prevents deaccessioning historical objects which were housed on the British Museum for the reason that early nineteenth century.
The British Museum was contacted for remark.
