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Comment by zimablue | Hacker News Reader

As a Brit who visited Greece it shocked me how much of a political issue it is there. I kind of came to the conclusion that any slippery slope or historical argument is less relevant than "If they want them so badly and we don't really care, just hand them over"

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>it shocked me how much of a political issue it is there

Not that much at all. Perhaps you encoutered it at all because you're a Brit and so got into related discussions. It's not like people talk about it that much there.

I agree.

The British Museum would be pretty empty if we had to give everyone their stuff back. I can see why they resist so much.

Museums constantly have borrowed items on display - borrowed as in not stolen. I'm aware this is a more common practice the more modern arts you're displaying but still. I'm sure an institution of such prestige as the British Museum could find ways to arrange temporary exhibitions of like everything (I'm tempted to make silly parallels to the handling of Brexit negotiations but I will better stop here)

Don't they usually arrange these as "swaps" though? (I'm no expert on this). I mean with other museums - I know there's the thing where rich people buy impressive shit and then lend it to museums so they don't have to worry about security.

I’ve never heard of this being an issue and I’ve visited Greece several times and have Greek coworkers.

Basically the marbles were stolen decades ago, and the argument was that Greece was in no shape to hold them, so England was protecting them. Now we have the Acropolis museum, that argument doesn't hold so well any more.

Just to make the history clearer, they were taken centuries ago -- they were taken to Britain between 1801 and 1812.

I saw it in (I think, it wa sa while ago):

Posters in the airport Museums Tour Guides Random conversations

So some touristic and some just random like airport and people

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