Museum machinations
Ruth Guilding on how a scholar helped fuel a row about ownership of the Elgin Marbles There was an unholy row last week behind the scenes at the British Museum. A conference had been called to examine an event which took place there more than 60 years ago. In 1937, Lord Duveen had tipped some museum technicians a few shillings to undertake an unauthorised and damaging cleaning of the Elgin Marbles, prior to their display in the spanking new gallery named after him. This 'scandal', already copiously covered by the press of the day, resurfaced last year with a new edition of a book about the marbles. The author's calls for transparency over this affair were eagerly taken up by the press, and countered by the museum with the promise of a public airing.
Art historians' gatherings are often tor-
pid affairs, but for two days this one had swayed between extremes of pomposity and level-headed scholarship, high-minded- ness, political invective and, just occasion- ally, seething, boiling hate. The closing paper was delivered by Dr Nicholas Penny of the National Gallery. Penny punctured a tense atmosphere with suave jokes, received by the grateful British contingent with hilarity. The rest of the invited audi- ence were quiescent.
With hindsight, our nervous laughter was premature. Conservation, not ownership, was the matter in hand, but many in the room had come with some other, skewed agenda. The British Museum is the legal owner of the marbles and does not want to give them up. The Greek delegates were polite and softly spoken scholars from Athens with a serious job to do, but there were also diplomats and journalists, who vied with one another in their choleric intemperance. Yet more outspoken were the home-grown members of the Commit- tee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles. And at the heart of this gathering storm was the figure of William St Clair, a distinguished former civil servant, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and prize-win- ning author of the controversial book.
St Clair's motives for raising the present row seem confused and confusing — per- haps even to himself — but last week he had a book to sell. Lord Elgin and the Mar- bles had first appeared in 1967, a scholarly, beautifully written account of the struggle to secure the marbles for Britain, which cost Elgin his wife, fortune, reputation, career and even his nose (eaten away by a skin disease contracted in Constantinople). It sold well, but now the third — revised edition is doing much, much better. It con- tains the results of St Clair's scrutiny of Duveen's controversial interventions with the marbles and the British Museum's subsequent exercises in damage limitation.
St Clair describes how his request to see the relevant archives in the British Muse- um was stalled. This has coloured his view of their continuing custody of the marbles, which has become, for him, a 'cynical sham'. When he attended the conference last week, it was in the personification of an avenging angel with a fiery sword, fan- ning embers which had smouldered for 60 years back into life.
The outcome of this was a tragic shame. The conference was convened to redress the damage caused by the museum's earlier panic and cover-up. Archival documents detailing Duveen's cleaning were circulated in advance, and the Athenian archaeolo- gists had spent a week assessing the sculp- tures' condition. In the opening paper, St Clair presented varieties of evidence from 17th-century drawings and 19th-century watercolours to modern photographs which categorically proved, he said, that the sur- face of the marbles had been ruined in cleaning by that bogeyman, Duveen. In reply, Dr Ian Jenkins for the museum agreed that Duveen's action and the subse- quent secrecy had been a scandal, but countered that St Clair's facts and figures were 'dud evidence', and only about 10 per cent of the surface coatings of the marbles had been removed. 'The British Museum is not infallible,' he cautioned. 'It is not the Pope.'
Jenkins also cited a comparable cleaning project undertaken on the friezes of the Parthenon's sister temple in Athens, the Hephaesteion, In 1953, every trace of their darkened patina was scoured off, leaving them, in the words of the delighted super- visor, 'as fresh as the day they were made'. No 'scandal' has attached itself here, main- ly because the marbles cleaned were in undisputed ownership and in situ, and there was no attempted cover-up. 0.
By contrast, the proceedings which fol- lowed were more low-key. Greek conserva- tors and scientists presented the results of forensic studies of the presence and struc- ture of the original surface of the marbles, the coating which shows up in darkened shiny patches (and which Duveen bribed the museum technicians to take off) on the portions of the marbles unaffected by weathering. This 'skin' or 'patina' has been invested with near mythic properties: as an original protective covering or a medium for a polychrome painted finish, applied in the 5th century BC, or (by doubters) as just a by-product of the effects of age, weather- ing and pollution. After many hours of debate, there was still no consensus as to its original chemical nature, and the extent to which it may have survived on the Elgin Marbles prior to Duveen's attacks (casts were made from the marbles in the early 1800s and they were cleaned on several other occasions).
Remarkable then, in these difficult cir- cumstances, was the degree to which the staff of the British Museum and the Greek scholars were in agreement. Both parties have begun to share research tools, and have arrived at a harmony of approach to the immediate questions over the marbles which should be the basis for future collab- orations. The conference should have aided this process in exorcising one murky incident in the museum's past. But a small politicised contingent came hoping for something closer to a war crimes' trial, with the museum in the dock and a satisfying sentence pronounced at the end.
So when Penny had made his closing remarks, an orchestrated and divisive rum- pus broke out, drowning one lone voice appealing for an end to blame and the bar- ren discussions of Europe's colonial past. Of course the next day's press brought the hoary old ownership debate once more to the fore. The danger of happy endings and new beginnings was safely over.
The matter of ownership of Lord Elgin's marbles is (unfortunately) a political one, as they were purchased through an Act of Parliament, And just look at the politicians fearlessly queuing up to join the roll-call of would-be restitutionists — Neil Kinnock, Ken Livingstone, President Clinton and many more to come. Meanwhile, the name of Elgin and his marbles has usefully served as a rallying cry all over the world for oppressed nations and minorities call- ing for the return of their own 'Elgin Marbles'.
What must Thomas Bruce, the high- minded 7th Earl of Elgin, be thinking, as he looks down or up? For my part, I cannot do better than to restate the original con-, elusion offered by St Clair in 1967:
Lord Elgin's aims were, from the beginning, entirely honourable ... there can be no doubt that the Parthenon marbles would be in a far worse condition today (assuming they survived at all) if he, or someone else, had not removed them when he did.
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