I was saddened by the recent news that Dimitrios Pandermalis, 82, the guiding spirit behind the New Acropolis Museum in Athens, had died—not only because he had always graciously answered my pesky questions and had been a kind, informative host when I visited Greece as an invited speaker at the 2008 “Athens International Conference on the Return of Cultural Objects to their Countries of Origin.” I was especially regretful because he didn’t live quite long enough to get to see the reunification of the sundered Parthenon Marbles, for which he had so tirelessly labored as president and curator of the New Acropolis Museum.
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
Pandermalis’ cherished goal now seems, at long last, to be within reach. As reported by Dalya Alberge in The Guardian, “a provision of the Charities Act 2022, expected to come into force this autumn, could have ‘a significant impact for years to come’ on restitution cases….Museums and galleries in England and Wales will be given unprecedented powers to dispose of objects in their collections if there is a compelling moral obligation to do so [emphasis added].”
This could help to overcome one of Great Britain’s main arguments against repatriating its Parthenon (“Elgin”) marbles to Athens—that the British Museum must comply with British law prohibiting disposals from its collection. The new law appears to loosen those strictures. Tristram Hunt, director of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, recently asserted that a British law that prohibits national museums from deaccessioning works should be reconsidered. And George Osborne, chairman of the trustees of the British Museum, reportedly said recently that his institution “should find a way of sharing the ancient sculptures with Greece.”
This shift in position could lead to reunification of the famous 5th century B.C. frieze that depicts a continuous procession of the Panathenaic festival, Athens’ quadrennial celebration, but had been infamously divided in the early 19th century (under controversial circumstances) between the British Museum in London (known there as “the Elgin Marbles,” named for the man who whisked them away) and the Acropolis, where they rightly belong:
For now, the New Acropolis Museum’s Parthenon Gallery combines the original marble sculptures with plaster copies of those now residing in the British Museum or other foreign museums (where some fragments have migrated). After having seen the then in-progress installation of this confounding construct, I commented that “installing the real and the fake on equal footing” would compromise “the moral force of the installation.”
An archaeologist who expertly and engagingly combined deep scholarship with popular outreach, Pandermalis may have been behind my invitation to speak at the 2008 Athens conference on the strength of my NY Times Op-Ed piece, Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Dec. 19, 2002), in which I had argued that “rather than fighting over the Parthenon marbles, Greece and Britain should work to reunite the fragments and take turns displaying the reassembled ancient masterpiece. In so doing, they would be honoring the museological imperative to put the highest priority on the integrity of the art work.”
You can find my opening comments at the Athens conference, titled, “Art history meets archaeology:considering cultural context in American museums,” on pp. 130-135 of the linked compilation of the speakers’ contributions. Our prepared remarks were followed by freewheeling interchanges with audience members, during which I got myself in trouble by saying something positive about American museums:
Left to right: CultureGrrl; Ricardo Elia, chair, archaeology department, Boston University; Elena Korka, head of Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Hellenic Ministry of Culture; Μoira Simpson, senior lecturer in arts education, University of South Australia; Maurice Davies, deputy director of the Museums Association, U.K.
If and when the marbles are at last reunited in Athens, the celebration should include naming part of the Acropolis Museum for the man who worked so hard to make it happen:
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
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