On March 24 of this year, Roger Michelfounder and executive director of the Institute for Digital Archeology (IDA) -an Oxford-based academic consortium created in 2012 that uses technology to preserve, study and recreate ancient treasures-, and Dr. Alexy Karenowska, technical director of the organization, scanned in 3D at the British Museum the sculptures of the Parthenon that the institution preserves and that are at the center of an intense controversy between the United Kingdom and Greece, which demands that they be returned. The marbles, 2,500 years old, were scanned with handheld devices in sight and patience of the security guards in an action that the IDA defends was legal after the Museum denied them the requested permit.
After scanning, the 3D modeled And now, just over seven months later, an exact copy of one of the sculptures was finally presented to the public on Tuesday. The chosen one was the Horse of Selene, “one of the most iconic objects in the collection,” as Michel explained to ABC in an interview granted on Monday, while the sculpture was being installed, and visitors will be able to appreciate it in The Freud House Museumwhich was the last residence of Sigmund Freudfather of psychoanalysis -fascinated with Greek culture-.
One of the objectives of this work, which was carried out in a workshop in Carrara, Italy, and whose quality is of “sub-millimeter” precision, is to demonstrate that replicas could be the key to finally finding a solution to a controversy between two centuries that has intensified in recent times. Thus, the copies could perfectly be part of the British Museum exhibition for the originals to finally be returned to Greece.
Two moments of the copy works and Roger Michel with the work
The return of the sculptures is a fundamental element of the cultural agenda of the Greek Government, whose prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakisspoke directly on the subject with Boris Johnson when he was still prime. Both he and the British Museum authorities have repeatedly refused to return it and have argued that they were legally obtained in the early 1800s by the British diplomat and archaeologist. Thomas Bruce Elgin, but after the conversation it was announced that the decision rests exclusively with the trustees of the British Museum. A Downing Street spokesman said then that the Museum “operates independently of the Government. It is rightly free from political interference”, so “any doubt about the location of the Parthenon sculptures is your business”.
historical dispute
In June, a group of parliamentarians spoke out in favor of the sculptures being sent to Athens “where they belong” and the director of the museum, George Osborne, he even suggested that there was an agreement in principle to resolve the historic dispute. And although the already former Prime Minister Liz Trussdeclared a month ago, when he was still in office, that he did not support an agreement, the Greek prime minister even believes that the King Charles III could be in favor of the return of the marbles.
An option that supports, according to Michel, 80 percent of the British public. “This is really not a problem for the ordinary citizen; I’m not even sure who the problem really is for, if it’s due to institutional entropy, National proud… I think part of the problem is that no one knows, or no one knew, who was in charge of making the decision, but now it has been clarified, we already know who is to decide.
Michel is convinced that “a lot of the trustees are going to be very happy that this works,” and launched an ordago to Osborne, director of the museum, whom he refers to as “an intelligent and intuitive guy, who sees how all the museums in the world have returned their Parthenon sculptures, and other looted objects, while Britain resists”. “I think that Osborne is a man who realizes that customs change and that things that are good at one time are not good at another”, so, in his opinion, repatriation is “only a matter of weather”.
The rules of the game
“For us, the project is about somehow redefine the rules of the game, because for two hundred years this has been treated as a contest where there will be a winner and a loser, where someone is going to get the marbles and someone is going to lose them. And nobody wants to be the loser”, explains this digital archaeologist trained in Oxford and Cambridge, who adds that “the central idea has always been that both parties can end up much better than they are now: the British Museum could have a gallery full of the extraordinary works of art that Greece offers in exchange for the sculptures of the Parthenon, including the mask of Agamemnon. Isn’t that what really shows what art looked like in ancient times? Because these marbles are beautiful, but they are building decorations that were designed to be seen from afar. I think the British could get some amazing objects and also fill the gallery with recreations of the Parthenon sculptures.” In this way, he continues, “the British Museum could offer a much more interesting exposition, more attractive and more educational than the one it has now”, and return some sculptures that for the Greeks are “their Statue of Liberty, their crown jewels”.
Michel is also very critical of the name of the Duveen Gallerywhere the marbles are, and expects them to be changed, since «Duveen was the greatest art swindler of the 20th century», and «when they speak against copies and the importance of originality, they do not stop to think that it The only thing that guy did during his career was sell fakes to people». In fact, “the two galleries next to the Duveen have nothing but copies of Greek art objects, the museum is full of copies. And museums use high-quality prints all the time. And that is why we are also here in the Freud museum, because, like him, we are very interested in the question of what is the value of a copy and how we build relationships with objects».
For Michel, this sculpture could “add value to the conversation so that the British have a better idea of why they are fascinated with these objects and why they no longer need them. It is very interesting for people to think in its relation to antiquity in a way they’ve never done it before, in the house of a guy who spent his whole life obsessed with Greek antiquity.”
And he concludes with a harsh reflection: «You cannot pretend to steal something, display it and that the legitimate owner does not want you to return it”, and “at the end of the day, if the British Museum decides that these copies are not for them, but decide for other reasons to return the Parthenon sculptures, it will be a complete victory for us”, that we are only trying “to make the cake be larger. We don’t have to cut it in half.”