British museum appoints trustee opposing return of Parthenon sculptures

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Dr. Tiffany Jenkins, author of the book “Keeping Their Marbles,” will join the group of new trustees of the British Museum, which includes television presenter and author Claudia Winkleman, Conservative Lord Finkelstein, a member of the House of Lords who served as an advisor to British Prime Minister John Major, historian and podcaster Tom Holland, and former BBC radio news presenter Martha Kearney for a four-year term. The trustees are chaired by George Osborne, the former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer.

As the Guardian recalls in its article, the Parthenon sculptures, which once adorned the temple on the Acropolis of Athens, “were removed between 1801 and 1815 by Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, who claimed to have received permission to take them, although no supporting documents for his actions have been found. The sculptures were acquired by the British Museum in 1816, but their legal ownership has been disputed since the 1980s.

What the new member of the British Museum trustees has said about the Parthenon Marbles
In her book, Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums… and Why They Should Stay There, Dr Jenkins examined the influences behind the much-publicized battle to return museum artifacts in an attempt to right historical wrongs. Her views contrast with those of another well-known historian and broadcaster, Dr. Alice Roberts, who recently met with the Greek Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, during the filming of her series on Ancient Greece for the British network Channel 4.

As Roberts recently stated to the Radio Times, the Parthenon Sculptures “belong to Athens. It’s not equivalent, but I imagine we might be upset in England if another country had significant pieces of Stonehenge and didn’t give them back. But in reality the argument goes deeper than that. There is an urgent need to acknowledge some of the questionable practices of the past, which have often been accompanied by a history of colonialism.”

The British newspaper notes that the new president of the Hellenic Republic, Konstantinos Tasoulas “is a prominent supporter of the return of the marbles. A former culture minister, Tasoulas played a key role in reviving efforts to recover the 2,500-year-old Parthenon sculptures.”

Until recently, the British response to the demand for the return of the Parthenon Columns was based on the idea that their removal from Elgin was legal and that the British Museum was their safest custodian, but in recent years the argument has changed, as Greece has moved away from simply claiming ownership. The issue is now often framed as a question of “reunification” of the Parthenon Columns, involving the sharing of the inheritance.

This stance was underlined by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who suggested that the art could be preserved in a different country without losing its significance. But in 2023, Rishi Sunak, who was prime minister at the time, cancelled a meeting with Mitsotakis at the last minute in a move that was interpreted as a way to sidestep the issue.