Three separate events have been organised by The New Acropolis Museum, to celebrate the festive season with free entry for all. See the detailed programme below.

Thursday 22^nd December

Starts: 5pm

A concert will take place on the second floor mezzanine with a view to the Archaic Gallery. The concert will consist of musical compositions by the renowned musician Marios Strofalis. Musicians: Marios Strofalis (piano), Vangelis Vergotis (accordion), Alfred Shtuni (violin) and Alexandros Mpotinis (violoncello).

Marios Strofalis Quartet play Monmarte

Friday 23^rd December

Starts: 5pm

The City of Athens Symphony Orchestra will present excerpts from Carmen by Georges Bizet and The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky. They will also perform the overtures from the Johann Strauss' operetta The Bat (Die Fledermaus) and from The Magic Flute as well as a duet from the Don Giovanni opera by Mozart.  Nikos Karagiaouris will perform the part of the baritone  in the Carmen excerpts and Vassia Zacharopoulou will perform the part of the soprano in The Bat.  Conducting the symphony will be Andreas Tselikas. The event will be held on the ground floor of the museum with a view to the Hekatompedon.

The City of Athens Symphony Orchestra performing Beethoven's Symphony No 5

Thursday 29^th December

Starts: 5pm

The Audio String Quartet will perform Romantic and Neo-Romantic classical music. The event will be held on the second floor mezzanine with a view to  the Archaic Gallery. Musicians: Alfred Shtuni (violin), Laertis Kokolanis (violin), Giorgos Gaitanos (viola), Ria Anastasiou (cello).

The Audio String Quartet performing Lullaby of Birdland

On the occasion of the passing of the great Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry adroitly argues why this is a prime time for Britain to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.

From:

www.stephenfry.com

Greece is the Word

 

I have a modest proposal that might simultaneously celebrate the life of Christopher Hitchens, strengthen Britain’s low stock in Europe and allow us to help a dear friend in terrible trouble.

 

Perhaps the most beautiful and famous monument in the world is the Doric masterpiece atop the citadel, or Acropolis, of Athens. It is called the Parthenon, the Virgin Temple dedicated to Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom who gave the Greek capital its name.

 

The Acropolis contains other temples and represents in the minds of scholars, historians and all who care about our past and the source of our civilisation, the pinnacle of Athens’s Golden Age under the leadership of Pericles; that period of peace between the wars against Persia which they won, and the wars against their neighbours Sparta, which they lost.

 

For students and lovers of architecture the Acropolis (over which I made a spectacular fool of myself some years ago) will always remain one of the most perfect examples of the Doric order ever constructed. The Romans and Arabians later added arches, ogees, domes, pendentives, barrelled vaults and squinches to the basic elements of architecture, but the Parthenon’s grace has never been surpassed. Its influence is all around us. Pillars, pilasters, porticos, pediments, architraves, entablatures, triglyphs and metopes may sound strange but we see them every day in high street buildings, town halls, 18th century churches, squares and crescents. Some people who spot trains or birds are called sad. I am a sad corbel, buttress and apse spotter – one who loves that there is a name for everything in architecture, a full and rich anatomy.

 

Doric elements were not the only thing that came from Greece. 5th century BC Athens was a city state that gave us Aristotle and his devising of logic, categories, ethics and poetics; Plato and Socrates led ceaseless quests for the discovery of the truth behind people, phenomena and politics. Their refusal to take as true any baseless, unprovable assertions made by priests, tyrants and hierarchs but instead to examine honestly from first principles took nearly two millennia to be rediscovered by the renaissance and then enlightenment philosophers who shaped our modern world very much with Periclean Athens in mind. Euclid and Archimedes are to this day heroes to all mathematicians and engineers. Their blend of rationalism and empiricism is at the heart of all science and sense. The sheer magnificent beauty of Euclidian geometric theorems and their proofs, has never, most mathematicians would agree, been surpassed.

 

The duty of Athenian citizens to play a part in justice through the tribunals on the Areopagus Hill was taken seriously, as was democracy in the form of regular voting: there was even an agreed assumption that theatre as a total art form that combined mask, dance, poetry, drama, history, music and religious ceremony was an essential element of public life and formed part of an open analysis of Athenian identity. As Nietzsche pointed out in his supreme The Birth of Tragedy, the Greek people had gone from tribal blood feuds, war and savagery to a peak of civilisation in a very short time indeed. Nietzsche chose the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus as representatives of the two sides of the Greek (and of course all human) character. One part harmonious, reasonable, artistic, musical, mathematical and idealistic, the other consumed by appetite, lusts and loss of reason through desire, greed and ambition. Whether we call these Freud’s ego and id or Forster’s prose and the passion, which we must “only connect”, no civilisation I can think of seems so clearly to display through its art, rhetoric, philosophy and politics just what it is to be a human, a social and collective being, what Aristotle himself called in a phrase almost worn away by universal use, “a political animal”.

 

Of course we are not talking about an ideal society. Slavery, the subjugated role of women, open paederasty and xenophobia, helotry and harlotry – these are not things wholly in tune with the temper of our own times. Read E. R. Dodds’s masterly The Greeks and the Irrational and you will see they weren’t all algebraic geniuses with a bent for brilliant oratory and logical exposition. But Athenian education, open enquiry, democracy, justice and a harmony of form in sculpture and architecture were quite new to our world and indeed their ability to question themselves is one of the things for which we are most indebted to them.  

Mr Pavlos Geroulanos, the Greek Minister of Culture, met yesterday with the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM) in order to further discuss the ongoing efforts regaring the restitution of the Parthenon marbles. The meeting was also attended by the Chair of Marbles Reunited and MP, Mr Andrew George. 

It was mentioned that Joanna Lumley had recently spoken to the director of the British Museum Neil McGregor, stressing the fact that the Parthenon Marbles should be returned to Greece where they belong. It is evident that from this action as well as previous sentiments expressed by the actress, Joanna Lumley  continues to support the cause.

The BCRPM have indicated that the London 2012 Olympics would be an ideal time for the British government to return the Parthenon Marbles to Greece thus paying tribute to the institution of the Olympics as well as returning the marbles to their rightful place.

From: 

Greek Reporter Europe

A meeting was held among representatives of the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles and the Greek Minister of Culture and Tourism Pavlos Geroulanos, who travelled to the United Kingdom in order to attend the London Tourism Exhibition.

The meeting’s attendees included the British Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, Andrew George, who promotes the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.

Moreover, the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles believes that Joanna Lumley would be a great supporter of the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles, since in her recent documentary named “Greek Odyssey” she was promoting Greek culture and tourism.

According to sources, Joanna Lumley had a meeting with the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor during which she said that she thinks that the Parthenon Marbles should be returned to their proper place in Greece.

Finally, the British Committee for the Restitution of the Parthenon Marbles has made known to British People that the London 2012 Olympic Games could probably be the right time for Britain to do something for the better, by returning the Parthenon Marbles to their rightful place in Greece.

Welcome to misery tourism – a Gap Yah for Lefties by Damian Thompson of The Telegraph

I’ve never been moved by the Elgin Marbles, despite their grand setting in the British Museum. If they were all in one piece, they’d be breathtaking, but those missing heads spoil it for me.

On the other hand, I’ve always enjoyed the fits of self-righteous rage that our ownership of the marbles has provoked in modern Greeks. First, I’ve never believed that they’re the descendants of the people who carved the marbles. Second, I’ve never trusted Greek assurances that they’d look after them. At any rate, the whole debate is now academic. Far from returning the marbles, perhaps this is the time to take the whole Parthenon off their hands in return for our contribution to the bail-out. Think how splendid it would look in the middle of Bloomsbury.

Three architectural competitions.  Twenty three expropriations. Twenty one demolitions. The ensuing removal of one hundred and fifty households. Countless hours of bureaucracy, debates and campaigns. Thirty three years. This (and a lot more)  is what it took to complete the purpose-built New Acropolis Museum.  One could hardly think of such an effort as indicative of a mere academic debate. On the contrary one could, and should, argue that this debate is very much alive. These modern Greeks  are no more, or no less, descendants of the people who carved the marbles than are the modern Britons descendants of the people who constructed the Stonehenge monument.  Indeed, one fails to see the relevance of such a statement to the debate on the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures.

The country of Greece in no stranger to tumultuous times as is evident from recent history. It was indeed during such a time that the Parthenon sculptures were removed from the Acropolis and the country. While under Ottoman rule, the Greek people could not prevent this loss, however, they also did not allow their spirit to succumb to the notion of defeat. It would be a mistake for anyone to suggest that current political and financial events have any relevance to the ownership of the Parthenon sculptures. An even graver mistake would be to diminish the value and importance of such great historical artefacts and reduce them to mere trading items. Mr Thompson does, however, make a valid point. The beauty of these sculptures could only be further enhanced by their reunification. And what better place to exhibit these complete structures than in their country of origin, in the city of Athens, a few meters away from the Acropolis, where these modern Greeks go about their day with the same passion possessed by their ancient counterparts. Now more than ever is there cause for the return of the Parthenon sculptures, a point which has been argued by MP Anrdew George in a recent article. 

Our Summer 2011 newsletter is now available for download.

You can view it here.