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Essay on parthenon marbles
Essay on parthenon marbles
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Legal Ownership of the Parthenon Marbles
The controversy began almost one hundred years ago. Between 1801 and 1812, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed several sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens and shipped them to England, where he sold them to the British Museum in 1816. 167 years later, Melina Mercouri, Greek Minister of Culture, requested that the “Elgin” Marbles be returned. This request sparked one of the greatest debates the art world has ever known. For the past two decades, people have argued over who has the rights to these Marbles. The Greek position is certainly understandable from a cultural and emotional point of view. However, from the standpoint of legality and logic, it is hard to make a solid case against the Marbles’ continued presence in Britain.
Legally, Greece could call for the return of the Parthenon Marbles if it could prove that they were wrongly taken and never belonged, legally or morally, to the British. If Lord Elgin’s title were proven defective, then the same would hold true for England’s title. In order to determine whether or not this is the case, the first question that must be raised is whether the Ottomans (then the recognized government of Greece) had the authority to transfer property rights to Elgin. Under international law at the time, acts of Ottoman officials with respect to property under their authority were valid. Even if those actions were not widely supported, they were still legal. The Ottoman officials had a solid claim to authority over the Parthenon because it was public property, which the successor nation acquires on change of sovereignty.
Therefore, it is clear that the Ottomans had the power to give Elgin property rights. The next question that must be raised is whether or not they did. This has proven to be slightly less clear. Elgin obtained from the Ottoman government in Constantinople a formal written instrument called a firman. This document states:
“It is incumbent on us to provide that they [i.e. Elgin’s party] meet no opposition in walking, viewing, or contemplating the pictures and buildings they may wish to design or copy; and in any of their works of fixing scaffolding ... around the ancient Temple of the Idols, or in modeling with chalk or gypsum the said ornaments and visible figures ... or in excavati...
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...ons. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre in Paris, and all other western museums contain vast collections of work from other parts of the world. These marbles symbolize the cultural property in all of the world’s museums, and this debate affects them all.
Works Cited
Daley, Michael. “Phedias Albion,” Arts Review Volume 52 (2000): 34-35.
Goldsmith, John. The Gymnasium of the Mind, The Journals of Roger Hinks 1933 – 1963. Salisbury: Michael Russell Publishing, 1984.
Hitchens, Christopher. The Elgin Marbles: Should They be Returned to Greece? London; New York: Verso, 1998.
Jenkins, Ian. “The 1930’s Cleaning of the Parthenon Sculptures in the British Museum,” The British Museum (2001): http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/parthenon/
Kurtz, Donna (ed.). Bernard Ashmole 1894-1988, An Autobiography. Oxford: Oxford Books, 1995.
Merryman, John Henry. Thinking about the Elgin Marbles: Critical Essays on Cultural Property, Art, and Law. London: Kluwer Law International Ltd, 2000.
St. Clair, William. “The Elgin Marbles: Questions of stewardship and accountability,” International Journal of Cultural Property Volume 8 Issue 2 (1999): 391-521.
Sculpture is a medium that artists in ancient Greek commonly used to express spoken truths in an unspoken form. Every piece of ancient Greek sculpture has more than what the eye sees to explain the story behind the [in this case] marble.
Parts of the sculptures that used to belong to the Parthenon are now residing within Britain’s Museum, and Christopher Hitchens argues that they be returned to Greece through his work entitled “The Lovely Stones.” Hitchens builds his argument by utilizing a short history of the incident and rhetorical questions.
There are a number of examples of works done before the twentieth century in which experiments were conducted. However, Michael Tswett used column liquid chromatography in which the stationary phase was a solid adsorbent packed in a glass column and the mobile phase was a liquid. He conducted experiments on extracts of chlorophyll in gasoline oil over 100 adsorbents. Most of these adsorbents are now no more important. Interestingly, the list of the inclusion of materials such as silica, alumina, carbon, calcium carbonate, magnesia and sucrose are still in use. He also confirmed the identity of the fractions obtained by the spectrophotometry at different wavelengths thus anticipating the most common mode for in liquid chromatography. In 1910 Tswett obtained his Doctrate degree and his doctoral research paper was published as a monogram which once again demonstrated his ideas for further development and improvement. That monogram marked the end of his chromatographic work. This is not surprising, because he was a botanist and chromatography is only a means and not an end. Chromatographic techniques had been ignored until 1930. One of the few exceptions was the work of an American L.S. Palmer, who in 1930 published his work for the description of the separation af plant and other dairy pigments. There are several reasons for the lack of interest in chromatography , for the moment, the main thing is that it
The Marble Grave Stele is a horizontal piece that was embedded in a larger piece of marble. The inscriptions of the names of who died have long been lost. Thus, we must interpret for ourselves what the full meaning of the piece is. The artist of the piece is unknown, but it was constructed in Greece in around 360 B.C. during the Classical Era and stands at 171.1 centimeters in height. Its original location, as its name suggests, was at a gravesite; currently, it is located in New York City at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Stele was carved from marble. Overall, it is in good condition; however, the body of the woman on the left is missing with only her head surviving. Its stone frame in which it was set is also missing. This frame more than lik...
The trip to the metropolitan museum was a great trip to learn and to study art. What is art you may ask, well art is an expression you use to show a visual picture. It can be through painting or through sculptures. Some other example of art is music, literature and dancing. For today 's paper we will be talking about art as a sculpture. The two sculptures in this photo are King Sahure and a Nome God and Marble Statue of Dionysos leaning on archaistic female figure (Hope Dionysos). You can find these statues in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. King Sahure and a Nome God is an Egyptian art that was made in 2458-2446 BCE. The artist is unknown. It was during the 5th dynasty and it also belong to the old kingdom. The Marble statue of Dionysos Leaning in the archaistic female figure is a Greco-Roman art. Belonging to the Roman imperial period of the late first century A.D. Augustan or Julio-Claudian period 27 B.C., to 68 AD. It is classified as a stone sculpture and it is made out of marble. The height of the statues is 82 ¾ inches. There is no evidence who was the original artist.
I think the Marbles should be returned to Greece. They should be placed in their original home so people can see them in the location of origin. Though some of these artifacts were bought, some were also stolen from the Greeks. Many Englishmen and women argue that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and therefore the Elgin Marbles now belong to England. This, however, is a preposterous idea because Greece initially already had possession of them.
For years on end, countries have been fighting with big museums from other countries for ancient artifacts that belong to the original countries. The argument of whether or not the museums should be able to keep them still remains. It is the right of the country to have their own artifacts. It is imperative for countries to be able showcase their historical artifacts, therefor museums should return them to their rightful owners.
...best case for the retention of the British Benin sculptures is to accord them the unique status they deserve as exceptional artworks and exhibit them appropriately in a prestigious national art gallery, for everyone to appreciate fully.
"Should Britain Return the Elgin Marbles?" The Week UK. N.p., 14 Feb. 2009. Web. 13 Feb.
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