Bring the Paintings Back Home
The Elgin Marbles are my favorite works on exhibit at the British Museum. They truly are magnificent—stretches of detailed reliefs taken from the Parthenon in Athens. They depict an incredible festival, home to gods and mortals alike. The detail of the figures is remarkable; every muscle on every creature is perfectly portrayed and the energy of each frenzied horse is shown through piercing eyes and flowing manes. When I first saw these imposing stones when I was younger, I was struck with an incredible sense of awe. It astonished me that these thousands-of-years-old relics made it through so much turmoil and now happily found themselves in one of the dozens of echoing halls in the British Museum. Thomas Bruce (Earl of Elgin) must have felt the same way I did; he decided in the early 19th century to move them from Athens to Britain in order to display them to the masses of London.
This was a bad call. Bruce was greatly criticized for this move by many of his peers, and for good reason. Lord Byron, a renowned British poet, admonished him for the act, comparing him to vandals and thieves. Bruce indeed had no right in taking the marbles—in fact, he only got them through manipulative deals and two-faced exchanges. The dispute escalated since then. Even today, Greece demands that the marbles be returned to their home country, yet the British government can hardly even admit that they were stolen works. In 2014, the UN decided to attempt to mediate relations between the two countries over this dispute but this led to no budging on either side of the argument.
Art shouldn’t be defined by borders. When bureaucracy impedes artistry, it’s a sign that maybe everyone should just calm down and look at the beautiful art that is made and that continues to be made to this day.
This leads to one big question: Who owns art? The purchaser? The thief, in this case? Or the artist? It is to my understanding that art should never be owned by a single person. Art should touch the lives of many, not the lives of few. So what if England has them? So what if Greece has them? Hell, so what if any country owns them at all? It’s completely arbitrary. Regardless of physical location, so long as the works are available to the general public, it honestly doesn’t matter who owns what. All that matters is that the art is impacting and inspiring thousands, and that’s good enough. Even though Bruce may have made a bad decision in stealing the marbles, in a way, he instilled awe into the minds of the hundreds of thousands who walked through the halls of the British museum. For this, he should be commended.
It’s petty for countries to squabble over such superficial topics. Art shouldn’t be defined by borders. When bureaucracy impedes artistry, it’s a sign that maybe everyone should just calm down and look at the beautiful art that is made and that continues to be made to this day.
Pieces of art should be returned to their home countries. However, they should not be returned if the home country cannot sustain or preserve their own magnificent works. The seizure of the Parthenon marbles helped preserve them and made them easily accessible for a huge population. There are innumerable benefits to having pieces of art preserved in famous museums around the world (not necessarily in their home countries)—their maintenance is assured and their safety is never in question. And, in the end, it doesn’t matter whether a painting belongs to Italy or France; what matters is that it is there and available for anyone to see. Until governments realize this, the spread of artwork will never go very far in the future.