The Acropolis : tales of plunder

When you're lucky enough to visit the world's great museums, most of the time you're happy: you see mummies, majestic temple facades, enormous animal sculptures and so on. You move from one country to another in a few steps without suspecting - especially when you're a child, because nobody tells you - that many of the works you see were acquired or even stolen during colonial-style conflicts.

Such is the case of the Parthenon marbles, belonging to the famous temple perched on the Acropolis in Athens (which remained under the control of the Ottoman Empire between the ^15th and ^19th centuries), bits of which can be found today in Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain. The British Museum even has a room long known as the "Elgin Marbles Room", in tribute to a Scottish aristocrat - Thomas Bruce, ^7th Lord of Elgin, ambassador to Constantinople for the British crown in the early ^19th century - whose team of painters, molders and architects removed, at his insistence, half the friezes from the Parthenon, as well as one of the six caryatids from the temple of Erechtheion, directly opposite. Greece has been clamoring for their return ever since.

The show GIAB deals with this incredible story.

THE ACROPOLIS : TALES OF PLUNDER is a short lecture that looks back at the removal of Greek marbles, with the help of a commented slide show and readings of extracts from letters written by the protagonists of the period. These clarifications will help us to formulate together a question that is so lively today: what if we returned the works of art that had been taken?

In November 2018, a "Report on the restitution of African heritage", entrusted to art historian Bénédicte Savoy and writer and economics professor Felwine Sarr, was submitted to President Macron.

The intention of this report is clear: "Return works of art to change the relationship with the other". When will there be a report on the restitution of works of art looted in Europe by Europeans? When will we see a change in our relationship with others?