London Fashion Week show at British Museum irks Greece

Published February 18,2024

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The Greek Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, expressed her anger late on Saturday after a London Fashion Week present happened in entrance of the Parthenon Marbles on the British Museum.

Designer Erdem Moralioglu selected the spectacular setting of the Athens Parthenon sculptures showroom on the British Museum to current the autumn winter 2024 assortment of his eponymous model Erdem, impressed by Greek singer Maria Callas and her interpretation of the opera Medea in 1953.

“By organizing a fashion show in the halls where the Parthenon Sculptures are exhibited, the British Museum, once again, proves its zero respect for the masterpieces of Pheidias,” Mendoni mentioned in an announcement.

“The directors of the British Museum trivialize and insult not only the monument but also the universal values that it transmits. The conditions of display and storage of the sculptures, at the Duveen Gallery, are constantly deteriorating. It is time for the stolen and abused sculptural masterpieces to shine in the Attic light,” she added.

The sculptures had been taken from the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis in Greece within the early nineteenth century by British diplomat Thomas Bruce, the earl of Elgin.

Athens maintains the marbles, that are a significant draw for guests at London’s British Museum, had been stolen, whereas the UK claims they had been obtained legally.

The 1963 British Museum Act prohibits the removing of objects from the establishment’s assortment.

But officers on the museum, which is below stress to repatriate different international antiquities, haven’t dominated out a attainable mortgage deal.

Late November, a diplomatic spat raised eyebrows when Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his “displeasure” over UK counterpart Rishi Sunak’s final minute cancellation of a bilateral assembly set to debate their long-running dispute over the Parthenon Marbles.

At difficulty for London was the Greek chief’s feedback in a BBC interview a day earlier than the assembly about possession of the two,500-year-old marbles.

Sunak was allegedly offended about Mitsotakis’s feedback that having among the marbles in London and others in Athens was like slicing the Mona Lisa in half.