Good luck with that. Like 80% of the inventory of the British Museum, they stole them fair and square, and they aren’t giving them back.
Complicated topic, though - the ottomans used the building/stone/lead for materials and otherwise left the stuff just laying around for centuries, and Elgin (and the brits) argued that the sculptures were falling apart. Greece didn’t exist as a nation 25 years or so before Elgin removed them, so I dunno how clear a title argument they would have. The EU specifically talks about returning unlawfully objects to their country of origin - the argument has been made that the Marbles were lawfully purchased, and the country of origin (Greece) was not in existence at that time, anyway.
Best bet is a lot of table pounding, nothing else changes.
The same issue seems to be briefly rearing its head here in France. There was an official report commissioned last year that said “hey, maybe we should give all this stolen stuff back to Africa?” Obviously it has languished on Macron’s desk since, and yesterday the ex-director of a museum in Paris that has a lot of it gave evidence in a committee hearing.
He had some pretty funny quotes. He wondered why they asked academics to do the report, “two people who are not museum people”, and said that arguing for the return was “a cry of hate against even the concept of a museum”. He made sure to cover all bases by pointing out that giving these works back to Africa was not at all comparable to France getting back the stuff that was taken during Vichy, though sadly his reasoning on that wasn’t in the article I read. Am sure it was first rate.
He ended with a passionate cry that “there is something perverse about pretending that the universaility of art is a bad thing.” Maybe Boris can use that one, are the Elgin marbles even Greek? Nobody owns a statue!
Just post this to further reinforce how this is obviously just a political game of nonsense carried out by euphemism. Neither side of Politicans actually gives a shit and the moral case for return is spectacularly clear cut.
They were so reluctant to grant Algeria independence they not only went to war over it but even beat to death and drowned in the Seine hundreds of protesters, so I can’t imagine France handing back anything looted from former colonies.
Not a politics question but: Is there anywhere online I can go and download or watch old episodes of Brit TV besides Youtoob? I’m looking for old After Dark episodes. Youtoob has a few but not very many unless I’m blind.
