Latest news with #ElginMarbles
Vogue
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
Brunello Cucinelli Spring 2026 Menswear Collection
Classiness and classicism combined at this afternoon's Brunello Cucinelli presentation in Milan. Classy touches included a comprehensive spread of today's Italian national newspapers, eight titles in all, laid out by the buffet. The classicism was built into the clothing we were here to contemplate, which included a comprehensive slew of intelligent seasonal twists applied to the canon of archetypically tailored menswear. Because many of the assembled looks were styled for the borderlands between casual and formal, that view also took in the T-shirts upon which many were built. These came printed with contemporaneous English newspaper reports describing the arrival at the British Museum of the sculptures, originally installed at the Parthenon, known as the Elgin Marbles. Any reference to the modern political debate around these treasures was entirely unintended. Instead their resonance was a reflection upon the capacity of classical forms to echo across cultures. The proof of that was in the garments these T-shirts were layered beneath. Cucinelli and his team started, as ever, with the classics, before applying the mirror of moment and context to retell them for now. This season, that storytelling was loose, light, and long. The skirts of tailored jackets fell buttock-skimmingly low, while the waistlines of roomily double-pleated pants climbed navel-grazingly high. The breadth of Cucinelli's collar shape had also duly expanded in order to maintain the harmonic proportion of the whole. While there were some unusually top-to-toe color stories here, most notably in navy, there were also a series of powerful color brushstrokes: an apricot linen blazer above a gray T-shirt and pant, or a soft knit coral colored shirt under a pale crisp cotton suit and a dark pinstriped trench. An unusually-toned group of looks played dark brown against navy. Cucinelli confirmed that the second point of reference after the fundamental architecture of tailoring was the period in the 1980s when the structure of tailoring was most tested by the boundaries of volume. The mix of those T-shirts, knit sports shirts, and shirting with tie-print inspired patterns under the tailoring further emphasized this fresh exploration of that historic period of creative deformalization. One difference in Cucinelli's approach to this subject was afforded by the technicality of today's materials—white blouson worn over a pair of double-pleated linen pants weighed in at only 80 grams. A pair of blue suede shoes that looked like the hybrid offspring of a soccer boot and a loafer was completely flexible and foldable in the hand, while still robust and resistant on the foot. Cucinelli further experimented by applying the same roomy architecture of his dress trousers to pants cuts in ultralight denim. While a pleated jean might sound pretty wrong, it looked perfectly right. With wearability his central mantra, Cucinelli creates clothes so classic that they operate as Italo Calvino once described classic prose: 'A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.'
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Yahoo
David Frost is wrong about the Elgin Marbles
Dull is the eye that will not weep to seeThy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removedBy British hands… The campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles began almost from the moment of their removal. Byron's lines have been quoted for two centuries by restitutionists. If there were a way to restore the mouldering shrines to the Parthenon itself, it would surely have happened by now. Who could resist making whole the Temple of Athena? There would be no need for long-term loans. My colleagues Lord Frost and Baroness Debbonaire would not be insisting that their surrender would be 'good diplomacy'. But there is no way to restore them to the original structure. All sides agree that those magnificent metopes and pediments – bleached and numinous yet, at the same time, eerily realistic with their flowing robes and flared horses' nostrils – need to be preserved indoors. A few carvings have found their way into collections in Paris, Copenhagen, Munich, Vienna and Würzburg. But most are housed either at the Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009, or at the British Museum. The argument is therefore whether to move them from one museum to another, which raises the question of what makes a successful museum. I would set the following tests. Where will any given artefact be most carefully looked after? Where can we best appreciate its cultural impact? Where is it most accessible to specialists and scholars? Where will the largest number of people get the greatest pleasure from seeing it? The Greeks unquestionably have a great location. To admire those white Pentallic stones on the slopes of the Acropolis, glimpsing its heights through the windows, is quite an experience. But the British Museum is the most visited museum in the world (at least if we count the Louvre as a gallery rather than a museum). Museums, as the etymology implies, are secular temples to the muses, those ancient goddesses who inspired sublime feelings in mortals. They were designed to raise the spirits of the masses, not only to spread knowledge, but also to elevate artistic sensibility. The British Museum has been carrying out that function since the mid-18th century, and in a remarkably universalist spirit. It was the first public institution to call itself 'British', yet it never saw its vocation as national. It was intended from the start to be encyclopaedic, a place to display curios from every culture. This universality is rarer than people realise. Most museums have a national or ethnic focus. In Washington DC, for example, you will find the National Museum of the American Indian, the Chinese American Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. But the British Museum, as its former director Neil MacGregor put it, 'remains a unique repository of the achievements of human endeavour, and there is no culture, past or present, that is not represented within its walls. It is truly the memory of mankind.' If our aim is the greatest happiness for the greatest number, there is a good case for keeping the stones divided, and using modern technology to fill in the gaps with exact replicas (the Acropolis Museum currently represents the missing stones with deliberately rough plaster casts so as to emphasise its grievance). But this is not really about aesthetics. It is about nationalism, and the desire of successive Greek administrations to claim a direct link to the ancient city states. And here, I part ways with my House of Lords colleagues. For demands that rest on collective racial entitlements are incompatible with freedom, property and the rights of the individual. Commentators are often conflicted about these ethnic claims. The kinds of people who insist on performing indigenous land recognition ceremonies in Canada and Australia would be horrified at the idea that second-generation immigrants to Britain were here contingently. Yet free contract rules out ancestral claims. If my grandfather sold his house to yours, I have no right to turf you out. There is no question that the British Museum purchased the collection legally from Lord Elgin, who had acquired it with the full permission of the authorities. Elgin had not at first intended to remove the carvings. He wanted to sketch and measure them, but changed his mind when he saw passers-by carting them off. 'The Turkish government attached no importance to them,' he told a parliamentary committee. 'Every traveller coming added to the general defacement of the statuary in his reach.' Elgin saved the stones. Free contract and private property trump the superstitious idea that being descended from someone, or at least living in the same part of the world, establishes some kind of ownership right. If the Acropolis Museum wants the collection, it should put in an offer. Frankly, the way Britain is going, we might soon need the money. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. 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Telegraph
11-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
David Frost is wrong about the Elgin Marbles
Dull is the eye that will not weep to see Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed By British hands… The campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles began almost from the moment of their removal. Byron's lines have been quoted for two centuries by restitutionists. If there were a way to restore the mouldering shrines to the Parthenon itself, it would surely have happened by now. Who could resist making whole the Temple of Athena? There would be no need for long-term loans. My colleagues Lord Frost and Baroness Debbonaire would not be insisting that their surrender would be 'good diplomacy'. But there is no way to restore them to the original structure. All sides agree that those magnificent metopes and pediments – bleached and numinous yet, at the same time, eerily realistic with their flowing robes and flared horses' nostrils – need to be preserved indoors. A few carvings have found their way into collections in Paris, Copenhagen, Munich, Vienna and Würzburg. But most are housed either at the Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009, or at the British Museum. The argument is therefore whether to move them from one museum to another, which raises the question of what makes a successful museum. I would set the following tests. Where will any given artefact be most carefully looked after? Where can we best appreciate its cultural impact? Where is it most accessible to specialists and scholars? Where will the largest number of people get the greatest pleasure from seeing it? The Greeks unquestionably have a great location. To admire those white Pentallic stones on the slopes of the Acropolis, glimpsing its heights through the windows, is quite an experience. But the British Museum is the most visited museum in the world (at least if we count the Louvre as a gallery rather than a museum). Museums, as the etymology implies, are secular temples to the muses, those ancient goddesses who inspired sublime feelings in mortals. They were designed to raise the spirits of the masses, not only to spread knowledge, but also to elevate artistic sensibility. The British Museum has been carrying out that function since the mid-18th century, and in a remarkably universalist spirit. It was the first public institution to call itself 'British', yet it never saw its vocation as national. It was intended from the start to be encyclopaedic, a place to display curios from every culture. This universality is rarer than people realise. Most museums have a national or ethnic focus. In Washington DC, for example, you will find the National Museum of the American Indian, the Chinese American Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. But the British Museum, as its former director Neil MacGregor put it, 'remains a unique repository of the achievements of human endeavour, and there is no culture, past or present, that is not represented within its walls. It is truly the memory of mankind.' If our aim is the greatest happiness for the greatest number, there is a good case for keeping the stones divided, and using modern technology to fill in the gaps with exact replicas (the Acropolis Museum currently represents the missing stones with deliberately rough plaster casts so as to emphasise its grievance). But this is not really about aesthetics. It is about nationalism, and the desire of successive Greek administrations to claim a direct link to the ancient city states. And here, I part ways with my House of Lords colleagues. For demands that rest on collective racial entitlements are incompatible with freedom, property and the rights of the individual. Commentators are often conflicted about these ethnic claims. The kinds of people who insist on performing indigenous land recognition ceremonies in Canada and Australia would be horrified at the idea that second-generation immigrants to Britain were here contingently. Yet free contract rules out ancestral claims. If my grandfather sold his house to yours, I have no right to turf you out. There is no question that the British Museum purchased the collection legally from Lord Elgin, who had acquired it with the full permission of the authorities. Elgin had not at first intended to remove the carvings. He wanted to sketch and measure them, but changed his mind when he saw passers-by carting them off. 'The Turkish government attached no importance to them,' he told a parliamentary committee. 'Every traveller coming added to the general defacement of the statuary in his reach.' Elgin saved the stones. Free contract and private property trump the superstitious idea that being descended from someone, or at least living in the same part of the world, establishes some kind of ownership right. If the Acropolis Museum wants the collection, it should put in an offer. Frankly, the way Britain is going, we might soon need the money.
Daily Mail
07-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
George Osborne is negotiating a 'reciprocal long-term' loan deal that will send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece
George Osborne is negotiating a 'reciprocal loan deal' that would send the Elgin Marbles back to Greece. The former chancellor, now the chairman of the British Museum, is understood to be discussions with Greek government over a deal that would return the marbles to Athens on a long-term basis. As part of the deal, Athens would provide the museum with ancient Greek artefacts, many of which have never been shown in the UK. Importantly, the British Museum would not give up its legal ownership of the sculptures, which would require a change in the law. The deal is to hoped to come into effect later this decade when the British Museum closes for refurbishment as part of the upcoming redevelopment of the Bloomsbury site in London. Sources, however, have told the Times that no deal has been finalised and an announcement is not expected in the near future.. The marbles, also known as The Parthenon Sculptures, are a series of Ancient Greek sculptures created between 447BC and 432BC by Greek architect Phidias. After standing for 2,000 years, the Acropolis was for the most part destroyed as the Ottoman Empire - who at the time ruled Greece - became embroiled in a war with Venice. The remaining sculptures were removed from the ruins of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin, then British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and brought to Britain between 1802 and 1812. In 1816, the marbles were handed over to the care of the British Museum, where they have remained ever since. Talks between the British Museum and Greece over the return of the Elgin marbles have been ongoing since 2021. A spokesman for the Prime Minister said that the 'care and management' of the sculptures was a matter for the British Museum and a long-term loan deal would not need explicit government approval. It has been claimed that, while Labour won't change a law that stops the British Museum permanently handing back the artefacts, Sir Keir would allow the 'loan' of some of the carvings to Athens. The fifth-century BC Parthenon sculptures were moved from Athens between 1801 to 1812 by the Earl of Elgin, when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire. The empire was crumbling at the time, with Greece securing independence in the following decades. The peer, who was the British ambassador, planned to set up a private museum before transferring them to the British Museum. Greece insists the artefacts were obtained illegally by Lord Elgin, but the UK is adamant that Lord Elgin had the permission of the Ottoman authorities. A 1963 law prevents the British Museum from permanently disposing of key items from its collection, although it would not stop a loan deal. It has been reported by the Critic magazine that Osborne has already agreed to give the Elgin Marbles to Greece as part of a permanent loan deal. Since the greek government still claims legal ownership of the sculptures, it was 'extremely unlikely that they would ever return to Britain', the report added. In responde, the museum said that talks has not advances sinc late last year when the PM hosted Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis at No10. A No 10 spokesman said also denied reports of an imminent deal. 'It remains the case that decisions relating to the management of the Parthenon sculptures are a matter for the trustees of the British Museum, which is operationally independent of the government,' the spokesman said. 'We have no plans to change the law that would allow the permanent loan of the Elgin Marbles.' When asked about the deal, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she had 'never been someone who thought we should send the Elgin Marbles back'. A Greek official involved in the talks said the deal would need to see the marbles being transferred for an 'extended period; not 50 or 100 years, nor one or two years'.
Wall Street Journal
23-05-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
‘Frieze Frame' Review: The Case of the Parthenon Marbles
The debate surrounding the rightful place of the Parthenon Marbles, which were removed from the Acropolis, the site of the ancient complex of temples that overlooks Athens, by agents of Lord Elgin and delivered to London in the first years of the 19th century, is an old one—so old that its terms were framed by the poets Byron and Keats in the 1810s, soon after the Marbles' arrival in England. Keats's 1817 visit to the British Museum, where the Marbles had been recently installed, inspired his rapturous sonnet 'On Seeing the Elgin Marbles' ('My spirit is too weak—Mortality / Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep'). His companion at the museum, the history painter and diarist Benjamin Haydon, encouraged the British government to purchase from Elgin the portions of the Parthenon frieze that he had acquired, and it is not unreasonable to suppose Keats agreed. He returned to examine them 'again and again,' his friend Joseph Severn remembered, 'and would sit for an hour or more at a time beside them rapt in revery.' Keats's reflections on mortality were not merely for effect—his death, of tuberculosis, came four years later.
