[MSN] Dorothy King tackles a thorny ethical debate with her first book - and courts controversy with her cultural arrogance, says Tom Flynn (The Elgin Marbles: The Story of the Parthenon and Archaeology's Greatest Discovery)

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Museums Journal, UK, May 2006

The Elgin Marbles: The Story of the Parthenon and Archaeology's Greatest
Discovery, By Dorothy King, Hutchinson, £18.99 ISBN: 0 09 180013 7

Dorothy King tackles a thorny ethical debate with her first book — and
courts controversy with her cultural arrogance, says Tom Flynn 

So the age-old Elgin Marbles Dispute drags on, with both sides still locked
in combat like Lapiths and Centaurs, exchanging vicious blows and refusing
to give an inch. It is staggering that leading scholars, museum directors,
lawyers and cultural heritage experts have failed to find a workable
solution to this problem. Instead, they're still squabbling over the same
old details — how do we interpret the Italian term qualque in early 19th
century parlance? —as "a few" stones, or as "any" stones? But don't assume
for a moment that if we could resolve these little linguistic difficulties
the problem would miraculously vanish. This is a deeply political issue and
it is getting more so every day.

Now yet another classical scholar has hitched up her peplos and dived into
the fray, but rather than suggesting constructive new lines of approach, she
reveals why the issue is as fractious today as ever. Dorothy King's
provocatively titled book is shot through with the kind of cultural
arrogance that over the years has progressively widened the rift between the
Brits and the Greeks on this issue. Tellingly, it is the same arrogance that
has recently led a number of prominent figures and institutions into hot
water. 

King's book on the history of the Parthenon arrives at the moment when the
issue of the restitution of cultural objects nears boiling point. And let's
be clear, the book is a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of controversy
at a time when a rapidly changing world order calls for more conciliatory
approaches to cultural relations. 

In October 2002, the mysterious Bizot Group of forty leading international
museum directors met in Munich and issued a "United Declaration" against the
restitution of cultural objects from so-called 'universal' museums. The
declaration condemned the illegal traffic in archaeological, artistic, and
ethnic objects, but insisted that, “objects acquired in earlier times must
be viewed in the light of different sensitivities and values, reflective of
that earlier era.” Recent developments suggest, however, that this "earlier
era" might never have ended. The former curator of antiquities at the Getty
Museum is in an Italian courtroom defending herself against accusations of
having handled smuggled antiquities, while the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York has been forced to strike a deal with the Italian authorities over
the return of other objects acquired under dubious circumstances, including
the infamous Euphronios krater, a 6th century Greek black-figure wine vessel
better known as "the Hot Pot". Other cases are pending.

And there's the rub. The repercussions for museums of owning contested
antiquities — whether acquired during the 19th century or in more recent
times — are becoming ever more critical. It is one thing for a museum
director to have aspersions cast on his institution, but the real damage is
to the objects, which become celebrated as provenance controversies rather
than for their historical or aesthetic significance. The Met's "Hot Pot" and
the British Museum's "Elgin Marbles" are the most telling instances of how
problematic provenance can poison an object's profile. Such epithets are
nothing to be proud of. 

For the most part, Dorothy King has produced an enjoyable book. Had she not
chosen to jump so breathlessly onto the pro-Elgin bandwagon — which is going
nowhere fast — it might have been celebrated as an accessible primer on the
Parthenon, although it is punctuated with bizarre observations. To describe
the corrective entasis that gives the Parthenon columns their graceful look
as an unnecessary architectural ostentation is to betray a surprising lack
of aesthetic empathy for ancient Greek architectural innovation and a deeply
unromantic bent of mind, although I guess we can't blame her for that.

King takes us on a whistle-stop tour through the monument's chequered
history. It's a fascinating tale, but the territory has already been covered
— and with greater style and authority — by Mary Beard among others. I was
pleased to find a section devoted to the colossal chryselephantine votive
statue of Athena Parthenos, which stood inside the temple — a subject given
scant attention in many general guides, although strangely King omits
Kenneth Lapatin's research from her bibliography. 

Her interpretive reconstruction of the pediment sculptures and metopes are
clear and self-assured. Sadly, discussions of this kind are always
undermined by our inability to then view the surviving fragments together in
one place. As King points out, "When we see the sculptures in a museum
today, whether in London or in Athens, it is a distorted vision of them that
we gain." That distortion is made all the more acute by the ongoing enforced
separation. Moreover the knowledge that our guide so vehemently opposes what
one would expect any sensitive classical scholar to support — the reuniting
of something so brutally wrenched apart — robs her text of much of its
value. 

But this book is not a contribution to archaeology. It is not a
comprehensively footnoted text and Ms King has no new research to impart.
Indeed scholars of archaic and classical Greek sculpture and architecture
will find most of its content familiar. Rather its title and closing
chapters confirm it as a politically motivated snipe at the Greeks and
others lobbying for the return of the Marbles. And that is what lets it
down. King's historical exposition, which comprises the bulk of the book,
sits clumsily alongside the closing polemics, which might have had more
weight had they been issued as a short, tightly argued stand-alone paperback
along the lines of Christopher Hitchens's incisive broadside for the
opposing team. 

As a frequent visitor to the sepulchral gloom of the Duveen Galleries at the
British Museum, where during a recent half-term visit my two young sons
spent a companionable half hour sketching the Horse of Selene, I confess to
being something of a conflicted restitutionist. But one can accept the
legality of Elgin's removal of the Marbles under Ottoman jurisdiction — and
indeed the fact that in doing so he might have 'saved them' from other
depredations — without concluding that they belong in London. If anything,
King's book strengthens the case for restitution.

Dr Tom Flynn 
(tomflynn at btinternet.com)

Blog: http://artknows.blogspot.com 
Web: www.tomflynn.co.uk