I have spent time wandering and wondering about museums before, and I have wondered whether they truly do what they intend and what we might feel they should do.  Hiroshima was one such, did it really achieve its aim of influencing nuclear weapons reduction by showing in an orderly and regular manner the torment of August 1944.  Perhaps the most effective lessons were learned at the remains of the Industrial Promotion Hall, the Genbaku Dome.  To stand in such a normal street and imagine the manner of forces that in a few seconds wreaked such destruction on fellow pedestrians, the building and its occupants is deeply moving and strangely frightening, while laying the human cost out in graphic simplicity in the controlled confines of a museum tends to make it all just another experience, however horrific.  Our understanding and reaction is most influenced when the missing pieces are filled by our imagination.

And so to the Parthenon. If ever there is a building with a history that tells of the passage of peoples and ideologies it is this one.

Not its creation, for that was achieved in only a few years in that short period which saw what most of us now understand as ancient Greek architecture, philosophy and democracy emerge and influence our thinking.  But what has happened after, brought about by the numerous changes in religious and political thought, and the inevitable wars that sought to control what to think, and the consequent scaring of its fabric. 

Like the Genbaku Dome, these are the scars of the Parthenon’s history; apply a small amount of information and we can imagine the reasons for the scars.  The scars carry the storyline, and the residual fabric denotes the continuity.

After 1974 when democracy was restored to Greece and the intention to protect its heritage took shape, the academic ambitions for the Parthenon were to undo some of the less expert attempts to reduce the decay and retain the form in the manner history had left it, at least until the next war came along. The ambition was minimal intervention and authentic conservation, Conservationist and measured.  But in more recent years, new proposals have emerged from the Interventionists, who seek to rebuild what is believed to be the original building, to create a replica image of that which existed before the damage was done. To my mind such an approach ignores the flow of history, stultifies the imagination, and stymies this monument to change.

Restoration or reconstruction is an ongoing debate, but sadly one that the Conservationists are presently losing to the Interventionists.  Now the scaffolding is back up. The remaining sculptures and reliefs have been removed from the facades - under the somewhat dated justification of protecting them from weather and pollution - and are being replaced with concrete copies and not a small amount of shiny new marble plastered over the scars.

After a series of false starts, the Acropolis Museum was completed in 2007, with a top floor dedicated to the Parthenon to house the artwork that for 2500 years had been displayed in its intended place high up on the hill. In the publicity much is made of the cleverness of this overtly modern museum from Bernard Tschumi. It shifts in form as it rises to the roof such that the orientation of the top floor aligns that of the Parthenon; the columns replicate the horizontal dimensions of the Parthenon; the re-housed artworks are surrounded by daylight like the Parthenon - although through the windows and not from the sky above and so devoid of the essential form enhancing shadows. 

But with its chrome columns and office ceilings the display of these works is at best mundane, disconnected, mixed in with concrete copies to confound the observer, and simply wrong both architecturally and philosophically. The view out of the windows to the carcass on the Acropolis only reinforces the disconnection of the decoration from the architecture. Imagination is stretched to breaking point.

And that is not all, for the Interventionists have other tourist pleasing ambitions, to not only try to rebuild the broken sections of the Parthenon, but to then reconstruct a long lost and barely understood Athenian temple, complete with a copy of its statue that went missing in the 5th Century, within the body of the remains. Well, there’s already one in Nashville, Tennessee so hey, why not?
https://www.tiktok.com/@simplehistory_/video/7386716992960515361

Notice boards dotted around the Acropolis berate the theft of the “Elgin marbles”, when Lord Elgin in his adventurous Victorian way bought a substantial number of pieces from the Ottomans - who didn’t much care for their representations of man and Gods - removed them from the Parthenon and shipped them back to England. According to the UK this was not theft but a purchase, although possibly not entirely cricket.  But with the Interventionists isolating the art from its intended context and displaying it in such mundane architecture, it makes the UK’s claim to retaining their pieces in the hallowed halls of the British Museum, amongst their sister contexts, appear more valid than expected. 

Back in London, the British Museum collection is more extensive than I had recalled, indicating that a large portion of what is seen in Athens is indeed a copy.  But perhaps most importantly, the display is by comparison superb; accessible, informative, elegant, respectful – and free for all. It too replicates the gaps in the collection, but with words rather than concrete, leaving the completion to the imagination of the viewer.
 
Yes, Elgin went a little too far by modern standards, and maybe his tools and methods of removal leave something to be desired today. Certainly, leaving these works in place should have been seen as the right thing to do. But what he did is little different to removing what’s left of the original work and mounting it in a mundane, disconnected and unprepossessing display in Athens, so at least he saved them from that fate.