The Getty Museum’s decision to return two more ancient artefacts to Greece, together with the return earlier this year of pieces from the Parthenon and the Erechtheion formerly in German and Swedish ownership, adds to the mounting pressure on the trustees of the British Museum to abandon their dismissive attitude to Greek proposals for the relocation of the Elgin Marbles to the magnificent new Acropolis Museum, which will open in Athens in a few months’ time.

Agreeing to reunite the British and Greek marbles in one gallery could bring enormous benefits to the British Museum in terms of reputation, prestige, scholarship and new loans from Greece. If the marbles are not returned the obvious gaps in the full-scale display will be an eloquent indictment of the British Museum, and of its trustees’ failure to appreciate that insularity, indifference to provenance and cultural trophyism are no longer practised by the world’s best museums.

GEOFFREY WHITE
Marbles Reunited
Sandy, Beds

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