Greek demands to get back the Elgin marbles risk stopping a better idea: museums lending their treasures

THERE is much to be said for moral clarity. Greece is insist­ing that the British Museum sur­render the marble sculptures that Lord Elgin took down from the Parthenon and carted away in the early 1800s. Anything less, it says, would "condone the snatching of the marbles and the monument's carving-up 207 years ago." The Greek demand for ownership will arouse widespread sympathy, even among those who accept the Brit­ish Museum's claim to the marbles. With the opening of an im­pressive new museum in Athens, the sculptures from the Parthenon now have good cause to be reunited, if only for artistic reasons.

But sometimes clarity is self-defeating. A previous Greek administration was willing to finesse the question of ownership and co-operate with the British Museum over a joint display of the marbles. By hardening its position, the Greek government risks driving museums everywhere into clinging to their possessions for fear of losing them. If the aim is for the greatest number of people to see the greatest number of treasures, a better way must be found.

As curators all over the world will see it, those who call for the permanent return of the Parthenon sculptures from Lon­don are arguing for international museums to be emptied.

Many other collections have a more dubious provenance than the marbles — think of the British Museum's Benin bronzes, seized in a punitive raid in Nigeria; of the Pergamon altar re­moved from Turkey and now in Berlin; of Chinese treasures carried off during the Boxer rebellion and again during the civ­il war; of hundreds of works in Russian museums that were snatched from their owners in the Bolshevik revolution.

You cannot go very far in righting those wrongs without entangling the world's museums in a Gordian knot of restitu­tion claims. That is why, in December 2002, 18 of the world's leading directors - from the Louvre to the Hermitage and from the Metropolitan Museum to the Getty Museum - argued for a quid pro quo. The Munich declaration, as it is called, asserts that today's ethical standards cannot be applied to yesterday's acquisitions; but in return it acknowledges that encyclopedic museums have a special duty to put world culture on display.

This has led to a new level of co-operation between muse­ums over training, curating, restoration and loans. Thousands of works are now lent each year between museums on every continent. Who thought that China's Palace Museum and the National Palace Museum in Taiwan would hold a joint show in Taipei, as they plan to in October, reuniting Qing-dynasty works that have been separated ever since they were borne away from Beijing by the retreating Nationalist forces in 1948? The British Museum was not party to the Munich decla­ration, but it seems to embrace its spirit. During the Olympic Games in China in 2008 it sent the Discobolus, the discus-thrower of Myron, to Shanghai where 5,000 people queued each day to see it. It will soon lend the Rosetta stone, the cor­nerstone of written language, to Egypt for the opening of the Giza museum. On the day the new Acropolis Museum was opened, the British Museum's director was in Riyadh, to ar­range loans for an exhibition on the haj in London in 2011.

The choice is between the free circulation of treasures and a stand-off in which each museum grimly clings to what it claims to own. Instead of grandstanding, the Greek culture minister should call the British Museum's bluff and ask for loan. The nervous British would then have to test the waters by, say, sending to Athens a single piece of the Parthenon frieze. If that piece were to be seized, then so be it. But if on the due date, the Greeks surprised everybody and returned the sculpture, then the lending programme would surely be expanded. By taking small steps, the Greeks may yet encourage the British to make the big leap. ■

 

The Economist June 27th 2009

 

10 Answer the following questions.

1. What issue is under discussion?
2. What countries are in the thick of things? What countries are also involved in the dispute?
3. What is the crux of the matter?
4. What is the historic background of the conflict?
5. What are possible solutions to the problem?
6. What gains and losses may those involved experience?

11 Read the text carefully to find a word or phrase that means:

 

1 to seize or gain                                   ……………………………

2 country or land                                   …………………………….

3 to pardon or overlook                    …………………………….                         

4 a place of origin                                ……………………………

5 to take away using force                     ………………………………

6 unable to achieve the intended result  …………………………………

7 to involve                                            ………………………………….

8 a deadlock                                           ……………………………………

9 relating to punishment                        …………………………………

10 to make an exploratory or initial approach ………………………..  

11 cut into pieces                                     …………………………………….

12 something given in compensation      ……………………………………..

13 to get smth by dealing with people in a skillful way ……………………….

 

 

PANEL DISCUSSION

       * Panel discussion  is the format of a debate in which participants representing various shades of opinion on a topic argue the case, usually under the guidance of a chairperson.

• Research Work. Look for the information on the following topic in various sources of information.

 

 

Ø Art Restitution: a rightful claim? 

 

 

The relevant issues may be useful to consider while discussing the topic:

 

Ø the Baldin collection and the Russian government’s line on that issue

Ø History of Looted Art, looting and looted countries

 

 

• Arrange the information in the written form.
• Choose a chairperson to lead the discussion.
• Contribute to the discussion.

 

!!! Strategy Point for panel discussion ü Voice opinions you are a party to. ü Take turns to practise reporting your ideas on the issue. ü When you report ideas in discussion, you must not read your source material. It is more usual to summarise or paraphrase the ideas in your own words. ü Listen carefully to the other students’ reports on their reading and make notes on the key points. ü Respond to the arguments of the participants with your own ideas. ü You have to take care to make it very clear to your listeners when you are expressing your own opinions, and when you are reporting ideas you have read or heard about. ü Use a repertoire of expressions for voicing strong agreement, disagreement, and all the shades of opinion in between. Expressing an opinion: If you ask me… If you want my opinion, … Strong agreement: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Conceding an argument: Ok, you win. You’ve convinced me. Hedging: I take your point, but … Yes, but … Qualified agreement: That’s partly true. I’d go along with that. Strong disagreement: I totally disagree. On the contrary …

 

PART 2

13 Read the following text.

The Museum Wars

 

Europe 's great art institutions are racing to transform themselves into modern centers of entertainment.

Cool, cerebral and formidably focused, Mark Jones hides his erudition beneath an easy affability. In his six years as director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, he has overseen the transformation of a venerable if quaintly eclectic institution into one of Britain's most dynamic and ambitious museums that is rarely out of the headlines. Recent headlines have not always been friendly: the V&A has come under sneering attack over its Kylie Minogue exhibition, and Jones has been accused of pandering to pop culture. Unruffled, he insisted that the V&A, like all museums, must broaden its views and its range of visitors.

At the Prado museum in Madrid visitors can peer into the past in a new exhibit of 19th-century photographs, which show artworks crammed on the walls wherever they would fit. Lithographs, paintings and plans chart the higgledy-piggledy development of one of Europe's best-loved art-treasure troves. Similarly, London's British Museum opened a new Enlightenment Gallery this year to celebrate the historic role of museums as centers of learning, displaying among other things intricate catalogs of 17th-century botanical specimens.

While such exhibits enshrine the past, ambitious new plans for the future are transforming the dusty halls of some of Europe's most revered galleries. In Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain, museums are scrambling to create bigger, more-dazzling exhibition spaces, smart new restaurants and shops, study centers and inviting public areas. The push reflects a shift in how the public regards its artistic institutions. "People want more than the old-style museum," says John Lewis, chairman of the Wal­lace Collection, a gallery of 17th- and 18th - century paintings, porcelain and furniture in London. "We are driven to become more an arm of the entertainment and education industries rather than the academic institutions we used to be." Throughout Europe, the race is on. With demand for culture increasingly driving tourist dollars, "cities are trying to compete for them," says research analyst Richard Cope.

 Madrid is hoping the $226 million refurbishment of the site that contains the Prado, the Reina Sofia modern-art museum and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, will raise its cultural profile to match that of London. New galleries will increase the museum's current exhibition space to more than 160,000 square meters—not including the 13,000 square meters for cafes, restaurants, theaters and offices, all linked by tree-lined paths.

No European museum expansion is more ambitious than Berlin's restoration of Museum Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the city center. The $2.1 billion project slated for completion in 2015 aims to turn the island into the largest art complex in Europe, covering all the major cultures in six museums filling 88,000 square meters. The Alte Nationalgalerie, an ornate classical temple built in 1866, reopened two years ago, displaying 19th-century artists, including German Romantics. Ren­ovation of the neighboring Bode Museum, with its collection of Medieval and Renais­sance art, is well underway, and the Neues Museum is being rebuilt to house Egyptian and prehistoric works. There are even plans to reconstruct the neighboring Hohen-zollern Palace to showcase Berlin's extensive collection of non-European art. And British architect David Chipperfield has been commissioned to create a striking new entrance to the whole complex.

These institutions are hoping to repeat the triumph of London's Tate Museum, which spent $243 million to convert a disused power station into a gallery of modern art. When the Tate Modern opened in 2U00, director Sir Nicholas Serota de­scribed its creation as part of a "sea change" in culture, with visual arts becoming the most popular creative medium. His remark has proved amazingly prescient: in 2002, the top two attractions among foreign tourists to London were the Tate Modern and the refurbished British Museum. A year after the Tate Modern opened, its impact on the local economy was estimated at nearly $200 million—far higher than the $42 mil­lion the McKinsey consulting firm first estimated the museum would contribute when it developed the business plan in 1996.

Smaller galleries, too, are hoping to cash in. Italian Culture Minister Giuliano Urbani plans to transform Florence's charming Uffizi Gallery into a world-class cultural destination. The original horseshoe-shaped building, created in 1560, will be restruc­tured to increase its exhibit space from 6,000 to 13,000 square meters. The $72 million expansion will enable curators to show 800 works now in storage. When completed the "nuovo Uffizi" will accommodate 7,000 visitors daily, near­ly double its current capacity. "We will sur­pass even the Louvre," predicts Urbani.

Some purists oppose the idea of turning museums into glitzy consumer complexes. "My reservation is whether we lose that calm and that moment of reflection, that sense of civic space," says Tristram Hunt, a museum curator.

Still, the trend seems irreversible: London's Victoria and Albert Museum now regularly stays open until 10 p.m., offering a cash bar and live music. The opening crowd for Kylie, Mark Jones of the V&A admits, was different from that for Van Gogh. But museums should be fun as well as instructive: "I want to show beautiful things beautifully so that people can enjoy them. I'm bored with the idea that people should only go to a museum to be better educated. Why shouldn't they go for pure pleasure?"

 The debate over the role of the modern museum will no doubt go on. Only now it will be conducted in state-of-the-art lecture halls and over perfectly frothed cappuccinos.

 

NEWSWEEK, STEFAN, August, 2007

 

14 Answer the following questions and sum up the information provided in the text.

• What shift in the approach to artistic institutions has there been recently?
• What impact on local economies does this new approach have?
• What steps do Spain, Germany, Britain and Italy take competing for tourist euros and dollars?
• What are the ways to raise a museum's profile?
• Have you followed any art-part-of-my-life trend recently?

 

Vocabulary

• Read the text carefully to find a word or phrase that means:

1     to record information ………………………………………………

2     mixed together in an untidy way ………………………………………

3     a place that is full of something good ………………………………………

4     preserve and protect …………………………………….

5     to respect and admire …………………………………………….

6     to get more attention from the public …………………………………..

7     to be planned to happen ……………………………………….

8     a traditionalist ………………………………………….

 

• Match a word from column A to its definition from column B.

A                                             B

reconstruct	to improve a room or a building by cleaning or painting it, adding new furniture or equipment;
restore	to change from one system, use, or method to another
refurbish	to build something again
renovate	to change or develop into something different
transform sth into sth	to repair and clean an old and valuable building, vehicle, or work of art
convert sth into sth	to make something completely different, usually in a way that makes them more attractive, easier to use
turn into phrasal verb	to make something old look new again by repairing and improving it, especially a building

 

 

• Translate into English:

1. Они превратили старый железнодорожный вокзал в научный музей.

2. По его первому роману сняли телевизионный фильм.

3. Нам придется восстановить часть стены.

4. Они превратили старую школу в дорогие квартиры.

5. Большой театр сейчас реставрируют.

6. Эти исторические здания, пережившие три разрушительные войны, были тщательно восстановлены.

7. Необходимо обновить это кафе, если мы хотим привлечь больше посетителей.

 

 

⇐ Предыдущая12345678910Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: