A response to two members of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, and other folks on social media

Dear Paul and Marlen-

Thank you both for your thoughtful email responses to my piece in Hyperallergic.

Just to clarify a few things in response to specific points you raise:

Paul, to your point that the Parthenon sculptures are also “spoils of war”: I do think there is a meaningful difference between troops literally stepping over dead bodies to get their hands on loot from a palace they are about to torch, and a diplomat in location x taking advantage of a war in location y to get another diplomat to make him a deal that will allow him to take things from location z. I recognize that colonial violence takes many forms, and that a slow burn can do as much long-term damage as a hot scald; but I don’t see the violence of the removal of the Parthenon sculptures as commensurate with the violence of Benin or Maqdala. I know that that argument may come across as pitting victims against each other, as some folks on social media have suggested; and I agree that that is a terrible thing to do. But let me turn this around and put it this way: it really matters to me whether or not there is blood on the objects I am standing in front of in a museum. There is something grotesque about the aesthetic pleasure I am invited to take in looking at an object when its presence in the museum bears an indexical relationship to thousands of deaths. (Of course, if we pull the lens out wider and look closely at how the raw materials for artworks were sourced in the first place, and not just how the finished products got to their current location, we will find blood everywhere, as Mark Letteney’s excellent thread on Twitter yesterday about giallo antico reminds us. Nothing is black and white in these matters.)

Marlen, I regret not making it clearer in the article that when I’m speculating about why white, liberal Europeans and Americans have shown so much more interest in the case of the Elgin Marbles than they have in African cases, I was speaking about the roughly 35 years prior to the recent paradigm shift, the period from Mercouri to Macron. The discourse around African colonial restitution has changed drastically since 2018, with the Sarr-Savoy report, Black Panther, Black Lives Matter, and Dan Hicks’ book combining to radically reorient public opinion in ways that were, I think it’s safe to say, quite unimaginable in 2017. There is no doubt that we are in a very exciting moment when real change is in the air.

That is why I was disappointed to see advocates for the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures pounce on the leaky roof of the Duveen Gallery. A leaky roof is not a decolonizing principle; indeed, it echoes one of the most neo-colonial arguments that the British used to make up until fairly recently, that the sculptures shouldn’t be returned because the Greeks can’t take care of them. Fortunately, that argument is no longer made by any but the most reactionary of retentionists (eg Dorothy King); the BM in fact explicitly repudiates this argument on their website. For the Parthenon reunification side to make this argument now undermines the moral and ethical legitimacy of their position.

What I am eager to see from the Parthenon reunification advocates is an articulation of decolonizing principles. “Send all colonial loot back” is one such principle, and many of the social media responses to my Hyperallergic article said essentially that. Maybe we have arrived at a cultural moment where that is a viable principle. But I doubt it. Even the Sarr-Savoy report is more strategic than that; it does not say that Quai Branly should be tipped on its side and shaken empty. Instead, it offers principles that should govern the process of restitution. Dan Hicks too advocates for a case-by-case approach.

The other argument one encounters just as frequently among the Parthenon reunificationists is the opposite of “send all colonial loot back”, namely, that this is an exceptional case because of the exceptional beauty and/or importance of the Parthenon and its sculptures, and that’s why they should be returned. I find this argument off-putting. As an art historian, I simply don’t believe it. Every culture has its own aesthetic values and its own masterworks; to say that one culture’s masterwork is better or more important than another’s is the very definition of cultural chauvinism. But more importantly, to say that this is a unique case is the antithesis of a decolonizing principle, in my view. Restorative justice is only justice if it exemplifies shared principles. Otherwise, if it is a one-off, then it is just a gift; and the power remains with the person who had the power to give it.

When it comes to items removed under the Ottomans, the need for principles is, I believe, even more acute than it is for objects seized by Europeans in Africa. At what point does imperialism/colonialism become sovereignty? Some would say never, and maybe that is right. I am looking forward to attending this virtual conference next week, where I imagine that question will come up. But for now, I would note that, for better or for worse, we live in a world that recognizes the sovereignty of Canada, the U.S., Australia, Israel, South Africa, and other settler-colonial nations. Given the long duration of Ottoman control over what would later become Greece, the case needs to be made for why the Ottomans didn’t have the right to dispose of the resources in their territories as every sovereign power does. And the case should take seriously all the other items of cultural heritage that the Ottomans also allowed to leave their territories during their rule. If the permission the Ottomans granted to Elgin is illegitimate because, as you say Marlen, “the Greeks had no voice,” then surely the permissions they granted for the removal of the palace reliefs from Nimrud and Nineveh and the Ishtar Gate are equally illegitimate, and those should be returned as well. To be clear: I don’t mean this as a slippery slope argument for retention. Quite the opposite, in fact: once we have identified the principles that will govern restitution, we should apply them to all cases in which the source country wants their belongings back.

I have always found the most compelling — and generalizable — argument for the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures to be that dismembered wholes should be reunited. But I have yet to see anyone lay this out as a principle, and consider what else it would apply to. Surely the case of the Persepolis reliefs is identical, insofar as there are umpteen examples where the head of a figure is in one museum and its body is in another halfway around the world. Likewise the dismembered Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp. There are many other examples. Again, I’m not saying this argument is wrong; or that this is a slippery slope and therefore bad. I’m saying that the Parthenon is not exceptional in having been dismembered and dispersed, and if that is a reason to reunite the parts, we should do that in other cases as well.

I am glad to hear you say, Marlen, that “at last month’s ICPRCP 22d session, the support of European and African nations for Greece’s request for bi-lateral talks with the UK was unanimous. And in turn Greece supports these nations too as they try to put forward their requests.” I hope that will prompt the reunification side to frame its arguments in terms of broad, general, decolonizing principles, the kind of principles to which the world seems remarkably receptive right now, and to acknowledge the other cases that those principles apply to. It would be wonderful, for example, if the case for the restitution of the Benin bronzes were laid out on the BCRPM’s website, or if the website featured a link to that of AFROMET, the Association for the Return of the Maqdala Ethiopian Treasures.

Paul, you express concern that my essay might be taken by the BM Trustees as license to do nothing. Some folks on social media read it as a straight-up case for retention. These are both misreadings. I hope this follow-up makes it clear that what I am calling for is for the BM to join the conversation that the folks at the national museums in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands have already begun about colonial restitution and to articulate the principles that will guide them through this process, whose time, I think we all agree, has definitely come.

best,

Liz