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Archaeology Institute Fighting British Museum over 3D Scans of Parthenon Marbles

14 points by Kaibeezy 4y ago

asimpleusecase 4y ago
I was at the Parthenon a few weeks ago. Had a guide who was an archaeologist and art historian. He casually mentioned the “theft” by the UK of parts of the Parthenon. I had no idea how evocative and current this issue was. This solution seems a reasonable one, it was rather odd to think that Greece would need to make replicas to place in their own historical sites. However, I suppose if the British Museum complied with this request the cylinder of Cyrus would be next and then hundreds of other artefacts. “Fake” artefacts are fine for tourists to look at but not very useful for Scholarship, return of artefacts would be a huge shift of power in Scholarship. Perhaps Greece could add envelopes more moral force to their argument by showing how well they support others scholars access to artefacts and that having the originals all together in Greece would enrich and improve access for all.
- ngcc_hk 4y ago
  But can they keep it in a polluted Greek environment
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > However, I suppose if the British Museum complied with this request the cylinder of Cyrus would be next and then hundreds of other artefacts. What's wrong with that? Robbed treasure should be returned.
  - noneeeed 4y ago
    Yeah. I'm British, I have zero problem returning the parthanon marbles. Of all the things in the British Museum it's probably the most obvious one to return: it's unique, it's location specific and it's part of something else that would be immesurably enhanced by it's reconstitution. It's also not that interesting in the museum context. I don't actually think they would lose anything much by returning it. It's become like the Mona Lisa, totemtic, but not actually that interesting as an exhibit. I was pretty underwhelmed when I saw it in its broken state. I would much rather other people got to see a reconstructed Parthanon then I get to see the broken parts. Unfortunately it's become such a heated topic I'm not sure I see a time when it gets returned without Greece having some kind of leverage over the UK.
    - padraic7a 4y ago
      "Unfortunately it's become such a heated topic I'm not sure I see a time when it gets returned without Greece having some kind of leverage over the UK" I don't understand your point here. Are you suggesting that returning it should be postponed because it would be an admission of bad practice or wrong doing of some kind?
      - detaro 4y ago
        Given the first sentence of their comment, how do you think that they are suggesting that it should not be returned?
      - noneeeed 4y ago
        I'm not saying it shouldn't be returned, I'm saying it won't be, not in the near future. The Parthanon marbles are a political touchstone/dog-whistle in the UK, especially for people who view the empire in a largely positive light. Views like that are sufficiently widespread that it would be hard to get the sufficient public support for one of the two major political parties to back their return. Corbyn vowed to, but his wing of the Labour party are out of power at the moment. If they were to come back we might see a change in attitude, but they would be strongly attacked for it. I can't find any indication of the current Labour leadership's position, I would expect them to dodge the issue as the try to appeal to the center.
        pasabagi 4y ago
        I guess the level of public knowledge about the British Empire is really very low. I just found out the other day that British gunboats shelled Wanzou district in the 1920s, killing anywhere between a handful to about a thousand people (depending on source). There are just so many 'incidents' like this that are deeply present abroad (imagine if the French had shelled Liverpool in the 20's!) but really obscure at home. (The burning of the summer palace is another Chinese example.
        noneeeed 4y ago
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    Quite. The Dutch should return the Netherlands to the Hapsburgs, or possibly to the Romans or Belgii.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      You seem to enjoy trying to derail conversations, why do you do this?
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        Obvious analogies are obvious.
        bee_rider 4y ago
        Brilliant meta-derail, to bring up obvious analogies when discussing your bizarrely stretched and non-obvious one.
        barry-cotter 4y ago
        Different people have different bases of knowledge, experience, principles and moral philosophies. It is obvious to the average Serb that Kosovo is rightfully part of Serbia while many others would disagree. The Aztecs find it obvious that industrial scale human sacrifice was morally correct. Standpoint epistemology, do you dig it?
        bee_rider 4y ago
        I guess, if you say so. I'll have to keep in mind that "stealing is OK" is part of the British moral framework, I was unaware of that, thanks for the insight.
        dahfizz 4y ago
        The legal owner of the Parthenon gave Elgin the right to take the marbles. The issue is that the modern day owners of the Parthenon dont recognize the legitimatecy of that transaction. It's a bit more muddy than straight up theft. I think the analogy to other historical issues is apt. Who is the rightful occupant of modern day Iran? If you could trace your lineage to an assyrian who owned a plot of land in Nineveh, and was displaced by the Babylonians, should you be able to kick out the current occupant? What if another person came along, and could prove their family owned the land under Babylonian rule but was displaced by the Persians?
  - kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
    The way the British acquired them does look really sketchy. Like, indefensible. Time to send them back.
- YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
  Those are side issues. The main issue is that the marbles were stolen and we ask that they are returned. Everything else is haggling with our stolen cultural treasures. And, yes, of course, the British should give back everything else their bandit hordes pillaged and looted from the lands they invaded.
  - danaos 4y ago
    It is also important to note the inept British museum. Water dripping from the ceiling! [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4WEFQMuWn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4WEFQMuWn8
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  Other articles on this matter have pointed out that good scans will enable CNC replicas with sub-millimeter accuracy, in marble from close to the original quarry sites. Good for tourists and scholars? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Digital_Archaeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Digital_Archaeol...
arketyp 4y ago
Having replicas could allow for some reconstruction work too, which, depending on the execution, and while I'm skeptical, could turn out quite cool.
fmajid 4y ago
The Parthenon had survived for two millennia, and it was destroyed in an incredible act of vandalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#Destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#Destruction I don't know which is more guilty, the Turks who used it as an ammunition dump or the Venetian who targeted it with mortars. In comparison, the vandalism and larceny of Lord Elgin is small potatoes. The marbles definitely ought to be returned to Greece, and replicas installed in-situ as they are now too fragile to withstand Athens' current pollution.
- mjbeswick 4y ago
  I would agree with returning them more if the parthenon was going to restored and the marbles returned to the original positions; however it seems pointless to transport them from one The British Museum to the Acropolis Museum which has 1/4 of the visitors.
  - mongol 4y ago
    Those visitors pay entrance fee to another museum, a Greek one rather than a British one as it happens.
    - greeneggs 4y ago
      All the more reason to leave them be. Free admission at the British Museum, versus €10 at the Acropolis Museum.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    These are stolen good, really it should only be the rightful owners' opinion that matters.
- altacc 4y ago
  The pollution isn't an issue as 1) they would be kept in the Acropolis Museum, in a controlled environment and 2) the British Museum "cleaned" their marbles and removed their protective layer that means even pollution free normal weather would quickly destroy them.
Reason077 4y ago
I can sort of understand the Museum's position in that allowing everyone to make their own 3D scans all the time would end up taking a lot of time and resources. But perhaps a compromise would be for the Museum to make its own scans using the best available technology, and make the data available to any institutions that want it? Or allowing the Archaeology Institute to do their scans on the condition that the data is made available to others.
isaacfrond 4y ago
Link didn't work for me. This is the text from a google cache. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tzRU7ALQnKMJ:https://pre-chewed.com/amp/an-archaeology-institute-is-fighting-the-british-museum-demanding-access-to-make-digital-scans-of-the-parthenon-marbles/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl&lr=lang_nl|lang_en https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tzRU7A...
kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
3D scanning ought to be high on a museum’s priorities, not something that outside entities force on them.
- washadjeffmad 4y ago
  Artifact scanning happens, but largely it's seen as out of the scope of the curatorial responsibilities of most museums. Museums have different purposes, and few are close to as large or wealthy as the V&A or Natural History. Mostly, staff are tied up preparing for exhibits, handling outreach and marketing, working events, performing curatorial duties, and managing operations, often not exclusively. A 3D scanner of some quality starts around $6000, a laptop that can scan and process things quickly about as much, storage and hosting is anywhere from $20-40k on a 3-5 year lifecycle, and a DAM capable of managing 3D digital assets could be a few thousand a year. Now assuming you are given funding, you've got to take a person who is qualified to handle the artifacts, understands the scanning process, can assess the quality of and correct their scans, has the time and access to label the digital objects so they can be integrated by the people who manage the collections, find someone who understands how to manage the "3D parts", and suddenly you have an idea of the burden the scale of this task would place on a museum with maybe half a dozen to a dozen full time staff and several hundred or thousand artifacts. This doesn't even touch rights of artists or owners, since few museums own everything they exhibit. Even more challenging, try convincing those people that allowing a third party to own digital simulacra of their works won't somehow backfire on them.
  - mavhc 4y ago
    Surely making a digital copy and releasing it to the world for free would be the first priority of any museum that wants to preserve things forever
    - Mindwipe 4y ago
      > Surely making a digital copy and releasing it to the world for free would be the first priority of any museum that wants to preserve things forever They wouldn't release it freely anyway, the copyright fees from owning the one high quality photograph of various artworks basically funds most British museums.
isaacfrond 4y ago
His rejection didn't stop him: After its earlier request to make a 3-D scan outside of visiting hours was declined, the IDA entered the British Museum during visiting hours to make a partial scan using a hand-held camera last month. Right... Apparently the British Museum allowed scanning twice already; though to more reputable institutes. In a statement released to Artnet News, the British Museum said it received regular requests to scan objects in its collection. “We facilitated the scanning of the Parthenon Sculptures by our colleagues from the Acropolis Museum in Athens on two occasions in 2013 and 2017,” the statement read. “We work hard to accommodate scanning and study requests where possible. It’s important to us that any request is properly supported so that we can ensure the highest levels of quality and accuracy and this is always balanced against our other commitments and work as an institution.”
- a2tech 4y ago
  I think people love to treat the British Museum like some sort of mustache twiddling villains but in reality its just run by people that are intensely devoted to caring for the collection and history. I have the utmost faith that if this group had been vouched for by reputable institutions and historians, had the funding, and had something novel to do (non-destructively) with an object in their collection the curators would have been more than supportive.
  - hawksprite 4y ago
    Fair enough. But most of this is still unnecessary. All that should be a requirement for visual access to scan the artifact is just being non-destructive in my opinion. I can’t image a justifiable reason to prevent this person from scanning for any reason beyond physically protecting the museum.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Is the IDA non-reputable? > Founded in 2012, the IDA is a joint venture between Harvard University, Oxford University, and Dubai’s Museum of the Future, focused on digital imaging techniques in archaeology. It digitally reconstructed Palmyra’s third century “Triumphal Arch”, which was destroyed by the Islamic State group in 2015. I don't know anything about the Dubai Museum of the Future, but the other two are pretty reputable institutions, unless there's something I'm missing.
nix23 4y ago
That reminds me of that excellent Ordinary Thing's clip ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDtLZ-l_ItE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDtLZ-l_ItE

14 points by Kaibeezy 4y ago

I was at the Parthenon a few weeks ago. Had a guide who was an archaeologist and art historian. He casually mentioned the “theft” by the UK of parts of the Parthenon. I had no idea how evocative and current this issue was. This solution seems a reasonable one, it was rather odd to think that Greece would need to make replicas to place in their own historical sites. However, I suppose if the British Museum complied with this request the cylinder of Cyrus would be next and then hundreds of other artefacts. “Fake” artefacts are fine for tourists to look at but not very useful for Scholarship, return of artefacts would be a huge shift of power in Scholarship. Perhaps Greece could add envelopes more moral force to their argument by showing how well they support others scholars access to artefacts and that having the originals all together in Greece would enrich and improve access for all.

ngcc_hk 4y ago
But can they keep it in a polluted Greek environment
jacquesm 4y ago
> However, I suppose if the British Museum complied with this request the cylinder of Cyrus would be next and then hundreds of other artefacts. What's wrong with that? Robbed treasure should be returned.
- noneeeed 4y ago
  Yeah. I'm British, I have zero problem returning the parthanon marbles. Of all the things in the British Museum it's probably the most obvious one to return: it's unique, it's location specific and it's part of something else that would be immesurably enhanced by it's reconstitution. It's also not that interesting in the museum context. I don't actually think they would lose anything much by returning it. It's become like the Mona Lisa, totemtic, but not actually that interesting as an exhibit. I was pretty underwhelmed when I saw it in its broken state. I would much rather other people got to see a reconstructed Parthanon then I get to see the broken parts. Unfortunately it's become such a heated topic I'm not sure I see a time when it gets returned without Greece having some kind of leverage over the UK.
  - padraic7a 4y ago
    "Unfortunately it's become such a heated topic I'm not sure I see a time when it gets returned without Greece having some kind of leverage over the UK" I don't understand your point here. Are you suggesting that returning it should be postponed because it would be an admission of bad practice or wrong doing of some kind?
    - detaro 4y ago
      Given the first sentence of their comment, how do you think that they are suggesting that it should not be returned?
    - noneeeed 4y ago
      I'm not saying it shouldn't be returned, I'm saying it won't be, not in the near future. The Parthanon marbles are a political touchstone/dog-whistle in the UK, especially for people who view the empire in a largely positive light. Views like that are sufficiently widespread that it would be hard to get the sufficient public support for one of the two major political parties to back their return. Corbyn vowed to, but his wing of the Labour party are out of power at the moment. If they were to come back we might see a change in attitude, but they would be strongly attacked for it. I can't find any indication of the current Labour leadership's position, I would expect them to dodge the issue as the try to appeal to the center.
      - pasabagi 4y ago
        I guess the level of public knowledge about the British Empire is really very low. I just found out the other day that British gunboats shelled Wanzou district in the 1920s, killing anywhere between a handful to about a thousand people (depending on source). There are just so many 'incidents' like this that are deeply present abroad (imagine if the French had shelled Liverpool in the 20's!) but really obscure at home. (The burning of the summer palace is another Chinese example.
        noneeeed 4y ago
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  Quite. The Dutch should return the Netherlands to the Hapsburgs, or possibly to the Romans or Belgii.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    You seem to enjoy trying to derail conversations, why do you do this?
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      Obvious analogies are obvious.
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        Brilliant meta-derail, to bring up obvious analogies when discussing your bizarrely stretched and non-obvious one.
        barry-cotter 4y ago
        Different people have different bases of knowledge, experience, principles and moral philosophies. It is obvious to the average Serb that Kosovo is rightfully part of Serbia while many others would disagree. The Aztecs find it obvious that industrial scale human sacrifice was morally correct. Standpoint epistemology, do you dig it?
        bee_rider 4y ago
        I guess, if you say so. I'll have to keep in mind that "stealing is OK" is part of the British moral framework, I was unaware of that, thanks for the insight.
        dahfizz 4y ago
        The legal owner of the Parthenon gave Elgin the right to take the marbles. The issue is that the modern day owners of the Parthenon dont recognize the legitimatecy of that transaction. It's a bit more muddy than straight up theft. I think the analogy to other historical issues is apt. Who is the rightful occupant of modern day Iran? If you could trace your lineage to an assyrian who owned a plot of land in Nineveh, and was displaced by the Babylonians, should you be able to kick out the current occupant? What if another person came along, and could prove their family owned the land under Babylonian rule but was displaced by the Persians?
- kwertyoowiyop 4y ago
  The way the British acquired them does look really sketchy. Like, indefensible. Time to send them back.
YeGoblynQueenne 4y ago
Those are side issues. The main issue is that the marbles were stolen and we ask that they are returned. Everything else is haggling with our stolen cultural treasures. And, yes, of course, the British should give back everything else their bandit hordes pillaged and looted from the lands they invaded.
- danaos 4y ago
  It is also important to note the inept British museum. Water dripping from the ceiling! [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4WEFQMuWn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4WEFQMuWn8
Kaibeezy 4y ago
Other articles on this matter have pointed out that good scans will enable CNC replicas with sub-millimeter accuracy, in marble from close to the original quarry sites. Good for tourists and scholars? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Digital_Archaeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Digital_Archaeol...

arketyp 4y ago

Having replicas could allow for some reconstruction work too, which, depending on the execution, and while I'm skeptical, could turn out quite cool.

fmajid 4y ago

The Parthenon had survived for two millennia, and it was destroyed in an incredible act of vandalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#Destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenon#Destruction I don't know which is more guilty, the Turks who used it as an ammunition dump or the Venetian who targeted it with mortars. In comparison, the vandalism and larceny of Lord Elgin is small potatoes. The marbles definitely ought to be returned to Greece, and replicas installed in-situ as they are now too fragile to withstand Athens' current pollution.

mjbeswick 4y ago
I would agree with returning them more if the parthenon was going to restored and the marbles returned to the original positions; however it seems pointless to transport them from one The British Museum to the Acropolis Museum which has 1/4 of the visitors.
- mongol 4y ago
  Those visitors pay entrance fee to another museum, a Greek one rather than a British one as it happens.
  - greeneggs 4y ago
    All the more reason to leave them be. Free admission at the British Museum, versus €10 at the Acropolis Museum.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  These are stolen good, really it should only be the rightful owners' opinion that matters.
altacc 4y ago
The pollution isn't an issue as 1) they would be kept in the Acropolis Museum, in a controlled environment and 2) the British Museum "cleaned" their marbles and removed their protective layer that means even pollution free normal weather would quickly destroy them.

Reason077 4y ago

I can sort of understand the Museum's position in that allowing everyone to make their own 3D scans all the time would end up taking a lot of time and resources. But perhaps a compromise would be for the Museum to make its own scans using the best available technology, and make the data available to any institutions that want it? Or allowing the Archaeology Institute to do their scans on the condition that the data is made available to others.

isaacfrond 4y ago

Link didn't work for me. This is the text from a google cache. https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tzRU7ALQnKMJ:https://pre-chewed.com/amp/an-archaeology-institute-is-fighting-the-british-museum-demanding-access-to-make-digital-scans-of-the-parthenon-marbles/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl&lr=lang_nl|lang_en https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tzRU7A...

kwertyoowiyop 4y ago

3D scanning ought to be high on a museum’s priorities, not something that outside entities force on them.

washadjeffmad 4y ago
Artifact scanning happens, but largely it's seen as out of the scope of the curatorial responsibilities of most museums. Museums have different purposes, and few are close to as large or wealthy as the V&A or Natural History. Mostly, staff are tied up preparing for exhibits, handling outreach and marketing, working events, performing curatorial duties, and managing operations, often not exclusively. A 3D scanner of some quality starts around $6000, a laptop that can scan and process things quickly about as much, storage and hosting is anywhere from $20-40k on a 3-5 year lifecycle, and a DAM capable of managing 3D digital assets could be a few thousand a year. Now assuming you are given funding, you've got to take a person who is qualified to handle the artifacts, understands the scanning process, can assess the quality of and correct their scans, has the time and access to label the digital objects so they can be integrated by the people who manage the collections, find someone who understands how to manage the "3D parts", and suddenly you have an idea of the burden the scale of this task would place on a museum with maybe half a dozen to a dozen full time staff and several hundred or thousand artifacts. This doesn't even touch rights of artists or owners, since few museums own everything they exhibit. Even more challenging, try convincing those people that allowing a third party to own digital simulacra of their works won't somehow backfire on them.
- mavhc 4y ago
  Surely making a digital copy and releasing it to the world for free would be the first priority of any museum that wants to preserve things forever
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    > Surely making a digital copy and releasing it to the world for free would be the first priority of any museum that wants to preserve things forever They wouldn't release it freely anyway, the copyright fees from owning the one high quality photograph of various artworks basically funds most British museums.

isaacfrond 4y ago

His rejection didn't stop him: After its earlier request to make a 3-D scan outside of visiting hours was declined, the IDA entered the British Museum during visiting hours to make a partial scan using a hand-held camera last month. Right... Apparently the British Museum allowed scanning twice already; though to more reputable institutes. In a statement released to Artnet News, the British Museum said it received regular requests to scan objects in its collection. “We facilitated the scanning of the Parthenon Sculptures by our colleagues from the Acropolis Museum in Athens on two occasions in 2013 and 2017,” the statement read. “We work hard to accommodate scanning and study requests where possible. It’s important to us that any request is properly supported so that we can ensure the highest levels of quality and accuracy and this is always balanced against our other commitments and work as an institution.”

a2tech 4y ago
I think people love to treat the British Museum like some sort of mustache twiddling villains but in reality its just run by people that are intensely devoted to caring for the collection and history. I have the utmost faith that if this group had been vouched for by reputable institutions and historians, had the funding, and had something novel to do (non-destructively) with an object in their collection the curators would have been more than supportive.
- hawksprite 4y ago
  Fair enough. But most of this is still unnecessary. All that should be a requirement for visual access to scan the artifact is just being non-destructive in my opinion. I can’t image a justifiable reason to prevent this person from scanning for any reason beyond physically protecting the museum.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Is the IDA non-reputable? > Founded in 2012, the IDA is a joint venture between Harvard University, Oxford University, and Dubai’s Museum of the Future, focused on digital imaging techniques in archaeology. It digitally reconstructed Palmyra’s third century “Triumphal Arch”, which was destroyed by the Islamic State group in 2015. I don't know anything about the Dubai Museum of the Future, but the other two are pretty reputable institutions, unless there's something I'm missing.

nix23 4y ago

That reminds me of that excellent Ordinary Thing's clip ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDtLZ-l_ItE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDtLZ-l_ItE