A Brief Discussion of the Elgin Marbles

Hello Friends! Today I want to go more in depth on a topic I gloss over in my video introduction to the Regency era. Greek and Roman statues and styles were hugely influential to the fashions of the regency era in dress, beauty, and intellectual pursuits. Most notably, the so-called "Elgin marbles" were hugely inspirational to fashionistas of the day. But what are the Elgin marbles?

Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803.

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin - Wikipedia
 

At this time Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire and while posted in Turkey, Bruce requested support from the British government to hire artists to draw and document the statues of the Parthenon. When the government refused he decided to undertake this work himself. In the summer of 1800, artists he had hired began to make drawings and take casts of the extant marble statues.

Regardless of what his original intentions may have been, by 1801, Lord Elgin began to remove statues from the Parthenon and its surrounding structures to be shipped back to England. In total he removed at least half of the statues in the Parthenon as well as many others from other structures on the Acropolis. He intended to decorate his home with them, but a costly divorce forced him to sell them to the British government who eventually placed them in the British Museum where they currently reside. Today, the marbles remaining in Athens are generally considered to be in better condition, than the ones removed by Elgin.


Elgin Marbles - Wikipedia

Even during Bruce's own time, his theft of these marbles was controversial. Some were supportive, but others, such as Lord Byron likened his actions to theft, looting, and vandalism. I think that this is not only true of these antiquities, but others in museums around the world taken from the places and cultures they belonged to so that they could be displayed elsewhere. 

I think that celebrating and displaying the artistic and cultural achievements of all peoples is extremely important, but to vandalize cultural monuments in pursuit of the decoration of one's home is abhorrent. We should be making every effort to ensure that cultural and artistic works be preserved and kept by the peoples and groups they belong to. If this is not possible, then movement and preservation of these works should be done in collaboration with the cultures they belong to or the people currently living on the land they are from and not simply stolen without any discussion or negotiation.

To learn more about how to get involved in returning the marbles of the Acropolis to Athens, please check out the links below.



Edited to update some images on 6/30/20, orig

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