Greek council rejects Frankfurt Parthenon loan over British Museum link

The refusal leaves the Frankfurt exhibition without the Greek pieces. Reports differed on the size of the request. The Jerusalem Post said it covered 12 sculptures from three Greek museums. The Art Newspaper, citing Greek media reports, said it involved nine fragments from Athens. The Greek Culture Ministry did not respond to the newspaper's request for confirmation.

The Frankfurt exhibition

Athena, the Stage is Yours: The Parthenon Puzzle opens at the Liebieghaus on 18 November and runs to 25 July 2027. It is built around the east pediment, the group of 39 figures that includes 3.5m depictions of Athena and Zeus. Eighty percent of that pediment is still missing, The Art Newspaper reported. The pediment was destroyed at some point between the fifth century AD and 1670.

Curator Vinzenz Brinkmann's team reconstructed the group from 3D scans and nine reliefs carved on Roman sarcophagus lids, most held in Rome. The British Museum is lending the feet of a striding figure and a piece of hanging drapery. The larger loan is a base with two feet nearly 50cm high and 1.4m long. Original fragments will be shown in vitrines, alongside a scaled-down plaster recreation 4m long and 50cm high.

The show will go ahead. Elisabeth Pallentin, a spokeswoman for the Liebieghaus, wrote that cancelling the Greek loans "does not detract from the exhibition's concept, or its scholarly significance." Director Philipp Demandt said in an August press release that new findings "fundamentally alter our view of one of antiquity's most famous monuments."

Why Athens said no

To Vima reported the Greek government's position that the sculptures are not separate objects to be lent but parts of one work that must be shown together. A British Museum loan requires the borrower to acknowledge the museum's ownership of the object, and Greek governments have refused that condition, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The British Museum Act 1963 bars the museum from permanently disposing of items in its collection. The British Museum has housed the marbles since 1817. According to the Greek Culture Ministry, the museum holds about 60 per cent of the Parthenon's surviving sculptural decoration. According to To Vima, the British Museum has lent Parthenon pieces before: in 2014 it sent the pedimental statue of the river-god Ilissos to the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg.

Loan versus return

Catharine Titi, a research professor of international law at France's CNRS, told the newspaper that the question is not whether the sculptures can leave London. It is whether the museum will accept their permanent return. The British Museum confirmed to The Art Newspaper that it "will still be loaning."