Should all museums give back everything that does not come from a randomly circumscribed geographic radius around each museum? Should the Louvre return the Mona Lisa to Florence, even though it was purchased lawfully by the French royal family? Should the J Paul Getty Museum in New York hand back all its Greek, Roman, medieval, and European art and sculpture, including many of the world’s most famous pieces? What about France returning the Bayeux Tapestry to England? Or Japanese museums sending back American rock memorabilia? Maybe Venice should give back the Horses of St Mark if we are now only allowed to see things where they were made?
These are facile arguments. Looting and criminality should be deplored and punished. But antiquities, like everything else, can be legitimately purchased or gifted, and we should celebrate museums that have quite properly acquired collections that educate and inform the visiting public.
Overarching this whole debate, the romantic notion that the marbles could simply be tacked back onto the Parthenon is deeply misguided....
October 22, 2014
Pushing back against George Clooney and his new wife — a lawyer who is working for the Greek government, trying to get Britain to return the Elgin marbles.
"[I]t is time to put aside the wilful misinformation and cheap innuendo that masks the genuine debt that everyone — most especially Greece — owes to Lord Elgin," writes Dominic Selwood.
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37 comments:
I honestly did not like her and I believe he will regret marrying her.
She will use his name and position to get ahead.
He fell for it.
If the marbles had stayed in Greece, they would have withered if on the Parthenon, or been looted or destroyed by one of the many armies and guerilla bands that have roamed the area since lord Elgin "liberated" them and put them in safekeeping in the Brtish Museum.
They are in the safest place they could possibly be.
Can we extend that argument to people who own "Indian" (or "Native American") sculpture that contain eagle feathers?
-XC
That line of thinking would seem to require the end of international trade, since things of value are sold by one citizens of one country and shipped elsewhere...
Those Dutch cities are going to be sitting pretty when they get their Masters back. The only problems is that this approach destroys the entire world of art.
There can be no second party ownership of art if the heirs of the creator always have first claim...
@Drill - I think the government is making the claim, but how the current government of Greece is the heir of the ancient Greek government, I canna tell you.
Following that reason, then if the Elgin marbles had been taken off to Istanbul that it'd be ok?
-XC
Lord Elgin clearly had the legal right to take the marbles, and his actions may indeed have preserved them for future generations. My son still feels the injustice of the Turks using the Parthenon for ammunition storage in the first place, without which the Parthenon would not have been in its ruined state when Elgin came along.
Look at the timing here, though: Elgin removed the marbles in the period 1802 - 1812. In 1821, a revolutionary war began (not the first such rebellion against the Turks) which led to independence in 1832.
If a Swiss art dealer had bought the Mona Lisa "fair and square" from Hitler during the French occupation, would this be considered a done deal?
Were the Turks the legitimate authorities in Greece at the time, or an occupying power?
I would like to refer the Court to the seminal case, Finders vs. Keepers.
The Drill SGT said...
That line of thinking would seem to require the end of international trade, since things of value are sold by one citizens of one country and shipped elsewhere...
There can be no second party ownership of art if the heirs of the creator always have first claim...
Imagine if this set a legal precedent for other things and not just art. Would the factory workers who build cars be entitled to a cut whenever the car is resold? My father was a carpender. Am I entitled to a cut whenever a building he worked on is sold?
I've read the book Monuments Men and I think Clooney is a dilettante who doesn't really understand what he is doing.
I'm going to suggest that the Italian government sue the Vatican for the return of the gold and precious stones looted from Roman temples and used in St. Peters.
Game on!
-XC
I'm ever so shocked to learn that "human rights lawyers" belong to the same class of airheads as members of the acting profession.
Brando: I would like to refer the Court to the seminal case, Finders vs. Keepers.
I believe the precedent you're thinking of is Keepers v. Weepers.
People are saying he married her so he can have a political career, but I'm thinking....really? Julian Assange's lawyer is going to help a US political career?
It's better for great works to be destroyed by natives than preserved by foreigners.
I think that the Brits should take back in exchange any an all artifacts of any kind that are based on the work of Isaac Newton.
Soon George Clooney will be asking his wife to return HIS marbles.
In this instance 'marbles' works better as the small glass balls that kids used to play with before the advent of expensive toys.
Thus, these small glass marbles stand in metaphorically for Clooney's testicles: as such, the joke is that Clooney's wife has his testicles in her possession.
The emasculating wife is a stereotypical device for humor over the centuries.
I didn't say it was a good joke. My guess is that practically everyone thought of some variation based on Althouse's headline.
But I thought it important to get it in writing.
But for Lord Elgin, the marbles likely would have deteriorated. He moved them to England as part of a larger effort to record the wonders of the Parthenon while he was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. With his personal fortune, he funded a team of artists who executed sketches and paintings of the buildings, took plaster casts of various artifacts and generally tried to preserve a record which was being either ignored (and by some accounts actively defaced) by the Turks.
Lord Elgin's personal secretary made the decision to remove the marbles to England, a decision his boss funded. According to Wikipedia, it cost Lord Elgin 75,000 pounds. This in 1799-1803. The British government purchased the marbles for 35,000 pounds.
So if the Greeks want the marbles back perhaps they could offer the British Museum the current equivalent or 35,000 pounds and the heirs of Lord Elgin (sure traceable) the equivalent of 40,000? Don't see that happening, do you?
What about the knowledge that the ancient Greeks stole from the Africans? What about that?
So: if Clooney's wife has his testicles, it means Clooney no longer has any testicles. However, in another context it could be reasoned that Clooney is now transgender: this would be a personal choice that many would feel should not be joked about.
It would indeed be interesting to see how a transgendered Clooney's acting career would evolve. Perhaps he would now get the parts that Renee Zellweger would theoretically be losing due to her dramatically altered appearance.
Wouldn't Hollywood love to give the same person a Best Actor AND a Best Actress Oscar? Take that, Meryl Streep.
The new transgendered actress George Clooney: everyone will be waiting for that first filmed kissing scene. I expect a line of Hollywood actors clamoring to do it to show their open-mindedness. With this in mind, the script would be a love triangle where Robert Downey Jr (mature lawyer) and James Franco (young artist-type) take turns kissing Clooney. The sex scene will be artfully filmed: a lot of blue lighting, that kind of thing.
I demand the Dead Sea Scrolls be returned to the clay jars in the caves where they Essenes wanted them to be kept.
The Greek gods get to have their silly Olympic Games done for them regularly since 1900. They are just being a nuisance again.
"J Paul Getty Museum in New York"
The Getty is in Los Angeles.
Clooney is another rich Hollywood fool. Among other evidence, his concern to return them to the "Parthenon in Rome." The mystery is why anyone takes these people seriously. I know; money.
Greece deserves reparations.
Ireland deserves reparations.
Egypt deserves reparations.
Spain deserves reparations.
Mexico deserves reparations.
Chile deser.....
I am relatively certain everybody deserves reparations.
/The Crack Emcee
"Should the Louvre return the Mona Lisa to Florence, even though it was purchased lawfully by the French royal family?"
If the British would simply produce Lord Elgin's lawful purchase receipt for the marbles, this whole unpleasant business could be laid to rest.
I hear no corresponding clamor to return the treasures of the Pergomon Museum to its "rightful" owners - yet. Of course, future owners may just want to destroy the same rather than preserve them.
The Greeks just sense a loss of parts of their dead grandmother's corpse, to paraphrase James Joyce.
MayBee said...
People are saying he married her so he can have a political career, but I'm thinking....really? Julian Assange's lawyer is going to help a US political career?
10/22/14, 8:07 AM
In some parts of the country that would be a plus.
If the marbles were returned to the Greek government, wouldn't it sooner or later cave to the highest bidder and sell them off? (You'd have to set up the transaction to prevent that.)
There is a lot of art that wasn't seen as anything more than literal rubbish; asking for it back is more than a bit like me finding a junked, abandoned car on a lot, having the property owner give it to me as long as I could haul it myself, fixing it up and then having the property owner lay claim to it (which has happened, often with the excuse that they'd been hoodwinked.)
If the marbles were returned to the Greek government, wouldn't it sooner or later cave to the highest bidder and sell them off? (You'd have to set up the transaction to prevent that.)
And then the sale to the highest bidder would be decried by the same people using pretty much the same facile arguments being made to challenge the lawful purchase by Lord Elgin two hundred plus years ago.
Which is why the only rational response is to refuse to entertain their latest temper tantrum by pretending that they have any legitimate argument or grievance.
But they make such a pretty couple.
I'm glad you linked to Selwood, his long form, deep-dive hostorical essays are pretty good. Even when I disagree with him I enjoy his writing.
Mark Caplan said...
"Should the Louvre return the Mona Lisa to Florence, even though it was purchased lawfully by the French royal family?"
If the British would simply produce Lord Elgin's lawful purchase receipt for the marbles, this whole unpleasant business could be laid to rest.
If you read the story, such a document exists. And has been produced.
@Ann, you can't construct such a contract that is enforceable. Who has jurisdiction in a dispute?
Once Greece has the marbles, they can do what they please.
_XC
Not a Clooney fan. I don't get why he married her. She is not that attractive. He is too old developmentally to be starting a family; in his late sixties he will be trying to draw his children closer while they are pulling away.
Maybe this is all part of his human rights crusade charade. He wants to be seen as a champion for human rights.
It's odd the rationalizations made for keeping the the frieze in the British Museum. This is "The" Parthenon. This is a special place, a sacred place that exemplifies western thought. Can't the right thing be done at least once for the Parthenon and maybe ourselves. Return the frieze.
RecChief said, "If you read the story," the British do indeed have legal title to the Elgin Marbles.
The Ottoman regime granted Lord Elgin permission to remove the Greek sculptures from occupied Greece. The legal question hinges on the legitimacy of that occupying regime. We normally don't extend legitimacy to foreign conquerors.
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