General Chat

Trade with Russia has not been embargoed just "selective" sanctions targeted at high rollers and the oil industry. Plus of course near total cutoff from Western finance which is really hurting.

No need to chuck the baby out with the bathwater Russians are ok. If ever you get the chance to go there then do. They are very friendly. Cooking at home is fine, hotels disastrous. They like a drink. Driving mad - they all think they are in a Bourne movie.

The Russians will go in numbers to see the sculptures - they love high art. The Brits will earn some useful goodwill.

The B.M. seems to have more political nous than the whole set of MPs lol.

:-)

So much for the 'sanctions on Russia'.

The Hermitage Museum is one of the world's foremost museums and it is wildly unlikely that the Parthenon statue on loan would not be returned as per agreement.

At the time when Elgin obtained a decree ( firman ) from the Ottoman empire there had never been such a thing as a Greek government, ever. The Ottoman empire had been sovereign since the C16. The Greek state is on very flaky ground in its claim that the decree was invalid as it has never tried to assert that it was successor regime to any of the other acts of the Ottoman empire - quite the opposite. If Athens felt its legal claim strong enough it could sue at the Hague. It does not do so because it would lose.

That leaves the aspirational wish to see the sculpture back on the Parthenon. No chance. The Greeks have ( wisely ) moved all the sculpture to a museum replacing the originals with replicas. That they leave the space for the Elgin frieze blank is a political statement.

It is not widely realised that Greek statues in their time were brightly painted. Hence the obsession with the shade of colour of the sculptures whereas the original Greeks would have seen them in colors!

Thus the choice is should the marbles be seen in a museum in London or Athens? Where would they be safest given the turbulence of Greek history and the UK ?

I first saw the Parthenon in the late 1960s. It was a real mess. Athens has been and remains a very polluted city and the next 50 years was not kind to anything old in Athens and that included the Parthenon. It is only very recently any serious conservation has been attempted.

The articles of the British Museum do not permit it to release anything - once started it is a process with no end not only for the B.M. but throughout the world. There are many demands for objects to be returned to their roots but it is fantasy. Should the French return the Bayeaux tapestry to England, should the Rosetta stone go back to Egypt, should Monet's painting of Parliament be moved from the Musee d'Orsai to Westminster and so on ?

fwiw the National Gallery was built in part to house the loot after the the British sacked Paris in 1815 including the Louvre. The British embassy in Paris (35 r du Faubourg St Honoré ) used to be Napoleon's palace. Should that be returned too ?

The Russians should enjoy seeing the Elgin sclupture. It was created under the aegis of a democratic government not a thing Russia knows much of.

If they get them back they can flog them off to sort of their debt problems! ;-)

Saw this mentioned but did not know it was clear who owned them

Are we playing ball or not?

The British Museum has decided to loan one of the Elgin Marbles to Russia.

I didn't know they were ours to loan out in the first place and was always led to believe that they "couldn't be moved".

Methinks there may be a few disgruntled people in some parts of the world.