George Osborne, chairman of the British Museum, has expressed hope that a deal can be struck to share the Parthenon Marbles between Athens and London, despite the two-centuries-long diplomatic feud.
“I’m still optimistic that we can reach an agreement,” Osborne told reporters in Athens on Tuesday. “If everyone enters into it with the spirit of we’re not going to get everything we want, as is always the case with a successful agreement, then there’s a deal to be done.”
The Parthenon Marbles, made between 447 and 432 BCE by the Greek sculptor Phidias, depict gods and processions in marble relief panels, sculptures, and friezes. They’re also known as the Elgin Marbles, after the Scottish nobleman Lord Elgin, who was the British ambassador to Constantinople. Elgin removed the sculptures from the Acropolis in Athens in 1801, while Greece was under Ottoman occupation. He later sold the sculptures to the British government, which has housed them in the British Museum ever since.
Greece has sought the marbles’ return since gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1832, arguing that Elgin had no legal grounds to remove them. British officials, meanwhile, have cited the British Museum Act 1963, which prohibits the museum from deaccessioning objects in its collection, as justification for retaining the sculptures. Tensions between the two countries have escalated in recent years, fueled by the opening of a dedicated museum for the marbles in Athens and reports of leaks and other preservation concerns in the British Museum’s galleries.
“I very much hope we can come to some arrangement whereby the Parthenon sculptures that are in London can be seen in Athens but they have to be shared,” Osborne said Tuesday. “I know that’s not the position of everyone in Greece, and I understand that and respect that, but that is our position, and so if we want to make progress, it has to be in that spirit.”
Osborne’s comments follow a September op-ed by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis published in the Guardian, in which he took issue with British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan’s characterization of France’s loan of the Bayeux Tapestry as “a very compelling example of international partnership.” Cullinan had suggested that a similar model of “reciprocal exchange” could be applied to the Parthenon Marbles.
“Nobody would seriously contemplate cutting what survives of the tapestry in two and displaying half in London and half in Bayeux, and claiming this was an adequate way to understand it,” he writes, “Yet that is exactly what happened to the Parthenon sculptures.”
Osborne, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been at the forefront of negotiations between the British Museum and Greece. In 2023, the London institution confirmed that it had been in talks with the Acropolis Museum, saying it was close to finalizing a deal under which the sculptures would return to Greece over time as part of a cultural exchange. The agreement never materialized. Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni told reporters days later that Greece would not accept a deal affirming the United Kingdom’s ownership claim. Instead, she proposed an exchange that would ensure treasures from Greek antiquity, including objects of comparable prestige to the Parthenon Marbles, would remain on display in London.
World leaders are set to convene at the EU-UK summit in Brussels next month. Speaking at a conference at the University of Athens on October 6, Mitsotakis suggested that discussions on diplomatic ties between the European Union and the United Kingdom, which voted to leave the bloc in 2016, would involve the British Museum dispute.
“The Parthenon sculptures will be part of this debate. This is not just an issue for Greece, it’s an issue for Europe,” Mitsotakis said.