Archaeology Institute Fighting British Museum over 3D Scans of Parthenon Marbles
news.artnet.com
news.artnet.com
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.
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.
Why are the pyramids in Egypt?
Because they were too heavy to carry to the British Museum.
Some pieces are original; others are reproductions of pieces held elsewhere. (It's not just the British Museum, but also the Louvre and Berlin Museum.) Those museums should do a 1:1 swap: the reproductions for the originals. The originals should all go back to where they belong.
I do actually respect the British Museum as a museum of British Empire, which was a noteworthy historical event in itself. The theft of artifacts is itself history at this point. But they have plenty of pieces to display that, which interfere less with Greece's need to recover from colonization -- including connecting to its own great past.
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.”
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.
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.
> 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.
The devil is in the detail though. They ‘allowed’ scanning by representatives from the country that many believe should still have their artwork.
Not allowing the scanning would likely have been a diplomatic incident.
What's wrong with that? Robbed treasure should be returned.
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.
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?
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.
An aspect of the defense of empire that particularly frustrates me is the way people will attempt to obfuscate that all the european empires were about resources. People like to make out that we colonised India because we wanted to teach them about western beauracracy and trains. The initial occupaction was conducted by a literal commercial company for commercial gain. Robert Clive became one of (possibly the?) richest men in Europe as a result.
Similarly people make rebellions sound like they were completely unjustified. At the same time, if you ask them what Britain would have done if the Germans had invaded during WWII, they'd tell you we'd have fought them to the bitter end. It's the nationalistic version of the idea that "no-one is the villain of their own story". Somehow us invading somewhere is different to Germany (or France) invading Britain.
The incident seems actually pretty typical to me. There's often an element of provocation, a degree of legal ambiguity, often a degree of moral ambiguity about the laws themselves (extraterritoriality etc). My guess would be that the Nationalists would have seen it as fully within their rights to seize a merchant vessel in China for military purposes.
The attack stands out because it comes in just in the tail of the first world war, and it's a naval bombardment of the civilian city of an allied power. It's unlikely (but possible) that a chinese person who had served on the western front alongside the british might have returned home only to be blown up by a british shell! It's also recent enough that it's presumably within living memory for some people who live in the area.
It's also an odd time, because at that point, the british and japanese were close allies, and were mentioned in the same breath by the chinese.
Standpoint epistemology, do you dig it?
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?
And, yes, of course, the British should give back everything else their bandit hordes pillaged and looted from the lands they invaded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Digital_Archaeol...
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tzRU7A...
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.
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.
https://www.myminifactory.com/category/SMK-Statens-museum-fo...
But "Bust of a Philosopher or Barbarian" is my favorite, I made a large 3D print of him that I keep on my desk.
https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-bust-of-a-phil...