During the reign of Napoleon, several outstandingly naturalistic marble sculptures that had been integral to the Parthenon were taken from Athens. The violation resulted for one of Napoleon’s men in the need for bringing sculptures to London instead of making copies, as he had wanted. Therefore, I find it unfair that the British Museum still houses the works and insist on passing them to the Greek government.
Initially, one of Napoleon’s men wanted to create copies of the sculptures to decorate his home with. However, according to the permit he gave to his team, no one could interfere with “taking away any pieces of stone with inscriptions and figures” (Zucker & Harris, 2018). The team misused their leader’s office and actually removed the entire sculpture from the building, having partly destructed it. Simply put, this action is originally illegal, which is the main argument against housing the sculptures in Britain.
It is also worth noting that the Parthenon has become the symbol of Greek national identity, which aggravates the unacceptability of storing the parts of it elsewhere. Although one would argue that the British Museum preserved the sculptures, they actually suffered while being removed from the building and then cleaned (Zucker & Harris, 2018). The only argument for housing them in Britain is that returning them to their place of origin would require doing that to multiple artworks in other Western museums, hence empty the latter. Along with that, not all of those works are real national and cultural symbols of their homelands.
To summarize, I am against exhibiting the sculptures from Parthenon in the British Museum. In one respect, sending them back to Greece would probably oblige other museums of the West to do the same to a big amount of their artifacts. I do not, however, find that necessary, as Parthenon plays a critical role in Greece national self-identification, apparently unlike most of the other pieces of arts.
References
Zucker, S., & Harris, B. (2018). Who owns the Parthenon sculptures? [Video]. Web.