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November 30, 1999

CONTENTS:




From: wch seal cseal@jps.net Subject:

Re: Elgin paid massive bribes for Marbles

Dear Ton,
As always, I enjoy your valuable contributions to discussion in the art world.
1. Regarding Lord Duveen- of course it is well known that his ethics were not of the highest calibre while he was selling off British art to America.
2. The Prince of Wales, whom I admire greatly, is the son of a Prince of Greece. If memory serves, the King of Greece is godfather to Prince William of Wales.
3. The payment of bribes is not at all unusual, even today, in many cultures. I can imagine how necessary such practices were to get anything done at all in the Ottoman Empire when Elgin was acquiring the marbles.
4. The recent earthquake in Athens and the resulting destruction (through inadequate museum preparation) of important ancient ceramics shows that anyone can make mistakes.
5. I wonder when it will be that the Italian government will ask for the return of that famous piece of war booty, La Gioconda?
Again, thanks for your fine work.
Christopher Seal

Museum to come clean over Elgin Marbles

By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
FRESH evidence about high-level cover-ups, bribery, barbarism and Britain's legal claim to the Elgin Marbles will be presented tomorrow to a conference of academics. George Papandreou, Greek foreign minister, shows his family the Elgin Marbles during a visit to the British Museum With pressure mounting on Britain to return the Marbles to Athens, the British Museum has convened the conference to investigate an episode 60 years ago when museum workers scraped clean many of the marbles to make them appear white. Two dozen conservation and archaeology specialists from around the world will sit for two days to take evidence from the museum, its accusers and the Greek government into the episode. They will hear allegations that in the Thirties unskilled workers "skinned" some of the 2,500-year-old marbles by using wire wool, carborundum, hammers and chisels to remove their original stained patina and the last traces of paint with which they were decorated. They will also hear claims that the museum's trustees at the time, who included Stanley Baldwin and the Archbishop of Canterbury, subsequently hushed up the damage and misled Parliament and even Prime Ministers. The museum was forced to call tomorrow's conference after publication last year of a book exposing the scandal by William St Clair, a former senior Treasury official, amateur classicist and archaeological sleuth. In his book, Mr St Clair, 61, who studied Greek sculpture at Oxford before joining the Civil Service, said the damage affected the surfaces of 80 per cent of the marbles and was irreparable. Since then, he says, he has uncovered further examples of damage and evidence casting doubt on Britain's claims to have legal title to the marbles, which once adorned the Parthenon. Britain's resistance to returning the marbles is largely based on the defence that in 1801 the adventurer Lord Elgin was given permission by the Turks, who then ruled Greece, to remove them. Mr St Clair, who wll appear as the first witness at the conference, says he has now uncovered evidence that Lord Elgin bribed local Turkish officials to allow him to remove many more pieces than he was given formal permission for. According to papers he has found in the Elgin family archives, the bribes amounted to 25 per cent of the total cost of Lord Elgin's removal expedition. The British Museum has always maintained that the damage was not significant, that it has always been open about it and that Mr St Clair has exaggerated his claims. But he says the museum has ignored the "30-year rule" on releasing official papers by refusing to admit the existence of vital documents. In his book last year, Mr St Clair disclosed that the then Archbishop of Canterbury chaired an internal inquiry into the damage in 1939. It examined only three marbles and concluded that one of them had been "skinned". When the book came out, the museum admitted to The Telegraph that it had been guilty of "a misjudgment" in not previously disclosing the inquiry's findings. The conference will also hear evidence from an official team of Greek archaeologists which was allowed to study the marbles last month after the row over Mr St Clair's claims. It will say that damage is worse than had been realised and that many details have been lost or distorted. The museum is expected to mount a vigorous defence of the cleaning while admitting that it has been less than open about disclosing all the facts.

Greece Reports on Parthenon Marbles

By THEODORA TONGAS Associated Press Writer
ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Marble figures and panels from the ancient Parthenon were defaced and damaged during a cleaning at the British Museum during the 1930s, Greece's culture minister said Monday, previewing the conclusions of a team of experts. ``There truly was a barbarous cleaning. The marbles were tortured,'' said Elisavet Papazoi, who presented a synopsis of a 100-page Greek report on the condition of the artifacts widely known as the Elgin Marbles. The report, scheduled to be presented Tuesday at a symposium in London, could boost Greek efforts to pressure Britain to return the pieces: 17 figures and part of a 160-yard frieze that decorated the 2,500-year-old Acropolis monument. Britain has denied Greek charges that the marbles were improperly cleaned. ``We have not yet seen a copy of the report by the Greek team, but look forward to hearing their views and those of other distinguished archeologists and conservators at the conference tomorrow,'' Frances Dunkels, a spokeswoman for the British Museum, said Monday. The marbles were taken by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, in the early 19th century. Britain maintains that Elgin acquired the sculptures legally when Greece was ruled by the Ottomans. Papazoi said that during cleaning in the 1930s, many of the marble surfaces were smoothed out and stripped of original details such as chiseled grooves that characterize the architectural work of the Parthenon. Papazoi stressed that the symposium is ``clearly a scientific meeting'' and not a deliberation on the marbles' repatriation. ``But ... we believe and hope that the presentation from the Greek side of the reality that exists after the 1937-8 cleaning of the marbles ... will have some positives,'' she said. Dunkels described the conference as ``the forum in which everyone will discuss in a balanced and measured way the effects of the cleaning,'' but also will look at the ``the wider picture'' of what has happened with other antiquities in other museums around the world. On a visit to the Acropolis earlier this month, President Clinton gave his personal support to Greece's campaign to reclaim the statues. Britain's Prince Charles also has reportedly voiced his support. ``It is an issue of ethical matters,'' Papazoi said. ``We are winning steadily the British common opinion.''

Greece in fair play plea over Marbles

FROM JOHN CARR IN ATHENS
ELISAVET PAPAZOI, the Greek Minister for Culture, yesterday appealed to the British sense of "principles and ethics" to secure the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum. She claimed that sentiment in Britain favouring their return to Greece had attained a respectable level, and was increasing. "This issue cannot be a purely legal one," Mrs Papazoi said at a press conference to announce the findings of a group of Greek archaeologists and other experts who have cast a critical eye over the condition of the Marbles. "It is more a matter of principles and ethics. We are steadily prevailing in British public opinion." Her statement appeared to signal yet another tactical change in the 17-year Greek campaign to regain the renowned sculptures of Phidias, almost exactly two centuries after Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin, had them removed from the Parthenon and shipped to Britain. Appeals to the legal side of the issue are being abandoned as impractical, as Elgin appears to have broken no law and had the authority of the Ottoman sultan, who ruled over Greece at the time. The new "principles and ethics" approach is based almost entirely on a single work of British scholarship, William St Clair's Lord Elgin and the Marbles. The Greek Government has seized upon Mr St Clair's revelation that British Museum cleaners used metal chisels in the late 1930s to try to clean what they imagined were layers of grime, thus ruining the statuary's carefully-limned surfaces and golden patina of age. This episode, the Greeks insist, proves that for the past 60 years the Marbles have been in unreliable hands. The archaeologists found evidence of "irreparable" damage caused by inept cleaning, Mrs Papazoi said, on the eve of an international conference on the Marbles in London. "The damage was more than we had imagined," she said, brushing off British insistence that modern preservation methods are beyond reproach. Nine days ago while escorting President Clinton on a tour of the Acropolis, Mrs Papazoi asked him to use his influence with Tony Blair to have the Marbles returned. The scene was an almost exact replica of that staged a year ago when Mrs Papazoi's predecessor, Evanghelos Venizelos, made a similar request of an embarrassed Prince of Wales. Meanwhile, evidence continued to emerge of the indifferent treatment of Greece's antiquities in their homeland. Greek press reports said that tourists on the island of Paros were horrified to see ancient underwater ruins being broken up during dredging work for a new wharf for the main harbour, a GBP.1.2 million project funded by the European Union. Work was halted two weeks ago, reports the daily Kathimerini, after "workers caused extensive damage to remains of ancient stone buildings and funerary monuments". Ministry officials declined to comment on an allegation by Paros residents that the remains of the island's 4th century BC Asklepion Temple at Parikia were bulldozed in an act of "ruthless destruction" to make room for an hotel.
http://www.the-times.co.uk/

Athens is blamed for decay

BY DALYA ALBERGE, ARTS CORRESPONDENT
AS GREECE renewed its plea for the return of the Elgin Marbles yesterday, it was accused of allowing its own sculptures to fall victim to theft, pollution and graffiti. Michael Daley, director of ArtWatch UK, the body which campaigns on restoration issues, singled out the Greeks' mistreatment of their own sculptures, in contrast to Lord Elgin, who "performed a supreme act of cultural rescue". When Elgin arrived in Athens in 1800, "many of its carvings had been lost and others had been defaced by Greeks and Turks". The mistreatment has continued this century, he argued. The head and neck of one of the key figures on the Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis has disappeared, he said, pointing to a drawing from 1881 of the complete figure. "It was her temple, yet she has lost her head this century. Where has it gone?" What, he asked, has happened to the torso of a female figure on the east frieze? He pointed to photographs of the back of the Philopappos monument, erected in Athens between AD114 and 116, showing it covered in graffiti. "This is the level of the Greeks' care and attention now, and yet they are so indignant about what went on at the British Museum 60 years ago," he said. He was referring to the British Museum's overcleaning of the Marbles in the 1930s. The museum accepts that its early treatment had been misguided but rejects claims of severe damage. Mr Daley added that while the Marbles were certainly harmed in the 1930s, everything Elgin brought back has survived, while sculptures that remained in Athens were being "dissolved by acid rain and are falling to pieces". Scholars are now having to base their research on looking at old photographs and casts. "The Greeks fear that taking them down would be an admission of the full extent of the problem, an acknowledgement that Elgin was right. Yet their own record in the 20th century, let alone the last one, has been disastrous." Robert Anderson, the British Museum's director, said the cleaning of the Marbles should not be seen as an isolated incident. "It should be put in the context of what has happened to similar sculpture, both in other museum collections and on standing monuments in Greece." The dispute has flared again as the museum stages a two-day conference on on the Marbles, starting today, to allow experts from many countries to discuss the evidence.
http://www.the-times.co.uk/