When Will the Woke Crowd Leave the Elgin Marbles Alone?

The debate surrounding the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece has long transcended the marbles themselves. This is the gorgeous collection with which Phidias, the most celebrated sculptor of Ancient Hellás, once embellished Athens’ Acropolis, including the Parthenon itself. Since the early 19th century, when they were smuggled out of Greece by the agents of Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, they have enjoyed England’s hospitality and understandable devotion. 

Though more recently animated by the high priests of wokery, the argument that the sculptures ought to be returned to their native Greece is not wholly without merit. Patriotic Greeks have long demanded the marbles back, and their passion—which far predated the more recent devolutionist movement—is not hard to understand. The product of a timeless genius like Phidias is not something to give away lightly; fellow patriots of different homelands can surely empathise with the pain of such a loss.

As is the case with such passions, this one has often degenerated into folly. A case in point is the recent cancellation of a scheduled conference by British-Sicilian classical archeologist Marco Trabucco della Torretta organised by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and due to take place in the Acropolis Museum, in Athens. Torretta’s talk was unceremoniously cancelled by the museum once the institution learned of his constant, coherent campaign for the marbles to remain in Britain. News of the demise of cancel culture, it would appear, have been greatly exaggerated. 

But della Torretta is right to oppose the marbles being shipped off to Athens. His fear that his country’s government would actually do it is similarly reasonable. The detestable, crumbling Starmer regime is not one to have much in the way of scruples when it comes to matters of national dignity. The Chagos islands debacle, in which the Labour government made it a point of (dis)honour to cede British sovereign territory to Mauritius, has made that much abundantly clear. To ‘return’ some of the world’s most famous artworks to Greece would further solidify Starmer’s place in the podium of politically correct spinelessness, the only one in which he can hope to shine.

But it is because the threat is so real that della Torretta’s opposition to it is deeply commendable. The Elgin marbles debate is about far more than the marbles themselves, important as they are. It is about the ludicrous concept that art and culture should be tribalised. That is an anti-universalist idea of high culture—and it is poisonous. The notion that Greece should only be for the Greeks, Egypt for the Egyptians, Assyria for Iraq, Rome for Italy would replace museums with ethnic fairs. This would make them a sort of locked compartments in which civilisations stare only at themselves. It is a remarkably provincial vision for an age that prides itself on openness and cosmopolitanism.

The great museums of the world were never conceived as altars of tribalistic braggadocio. They were built, instead, as temples of encounter. To walk through the British Museum, the Louvre, the Hermitage, or the Metropolitan Museum is to experience something profoundly moving: humanity speaking to itself across centuries and continents. There, Achaemenid reliefs converse with the works of a Florentine master; an Egyptian sarcophagus stands just a few rooms away from medieval Christendom; Greece, India, China, and Mesoamerica coexist under the same roof in dialogue with one another. To be this magnificent symposium of civilisations is exactly the raison d’être of a top museum. The museum is not a monument to imperialism, but to human diversity, curiosity, and mutual respect.

The instincts behind repatriation seek to dismantle this very miracle. Its advocates pretend to speak in the moralistic language of historical revanche, but what their vision produces is cultural diminishment. A civilisation that is absent from the world’s great museums would not be confessing its irrelevance. The thought should horrify any man who shows pride in his heritage. As a Portuguese patriot, I could scarcely celebrate the disappearance of Portuguese masterpieces from the world stage. Would it be a triumph if navigational charts from the Age of Discoveries, Portuguese sacred art, azulejos, or the works of its greatest masters vanished from Paris, London, or New York? Quite the opposite: I should consider it a mark of national disgrace.

To see the mightiest achievements of one’s culture represented abroad is not belittling. The exact opposite is the case. Great cultures become universal precisely because they transcend geography. 

But the practical implications of repatriation are often even bleaker. Ours is an age of extraordinary instability. States now collapse with terrifying speed; ideology often wages war on memory itself. One needs only remember the black banners of ISIS fluttering over the ruins of Palmyra or the systematic destruction of irreplaceable Assyrian treasures in Iraq. Civilisations thousands of years old were reduced to rubble by fanatics armed with cameras and explosives. The truth, therefore, is that not every modern state possesses equal capacity to safeguard humanity’s inheritance. That heritage is safest simply because it rests within contemporary borders—borders often younger than the objects themselves? Such thinking is romantic at best, reckless at worst.

While this particular concern self-evidently does not apply to Greece, the arguments made for the return of the Elgin marbles would, if successful, necessarily strengthen those for the similar devolution of artifacts from European museums to nations in Africa and the Middle East. That domino effect ought to be avoided.

Ultimately, works of art have lives of their own. They move—and, quite often, survive exactly because of it. They are rescued by empires, preserved by collectors, protected by foreign institutions. Sometimes, they’re even saved by exile. Had many antiquities remained where they originated, countless treasures would simply no longer exist. One suspects that posterity, less sentimental than activists, will judge preservation more kindly than the ideologists and their hysterics.

The Elgin Marbles themselves are not diminished by standing in London. If anything, they are elevated. There, among the achievements of myriad civilisations, Greece is presented not as an isolated curiosity, no matter how glorious, but as one of the towering pillars of the human story. They also act as Greece’s magnificent embassy to the world. No one has ever decided against visiting Athens because the marbles aren’t there; but countless millions have flown to Greece inspired by the glorious Greek artifacts they have found closer to home or in one of the world’s most prestigious and desired cultural institutions. Today’s Greeks, being the descendents of Phidias and Praxiteles, should feel pride in the world’s celebration of their past.

Meanwhile, the time has come for the rehabilitation of the universalist grand museum. If our age truly believes in intercivilisational dialogue, then it must reject the dark prospect of a cultural apartheid. Humanity’s greatest achievements should not be turned into a plethora of disparate boxes. They should be admired in their entirety.