Celestine BOHLEN,
Major Museums Affirm Right to Keep Long-Held Antiquities.

Directors of major European and American museums have issued a 
strongly worded statement affirming their right to keep long-held 
antiquities that countries like Greece and Egypt, with increasing insistence, 
have demanded be repatriated.

The statement, signed by directors of 18 museums, including Philippe de 
Montebello of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the heads of nine other 
American institutions, was released last week to a newspaper in London, 
where the British Museum has resisted Greek demands for the return - 
even on temporary loan - of the marble sculptures and friezes removed 
from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin in 1801 to 1803.

That statement acknowledges that illegal traffic in ancient and ethnic 
artwork should now be "firmly discouraged." 

But it argues that objects acquired in the past should be "viewed in 
the light of different sensitivities and values, reflective of that earlier era." 

Those objects "have become part of the museums that have cared for 
them, and by extension part of the heritage of the nations which house 
them," the statement says.

Nonetheless, the statement notes that each repatriation case should be 
judged individually. "The point of the statement was not to take clear-cut 
positions on any individual case," said James N- Wood, director of the Art 
Institute of Chicago and one of the signatories, "but really to understand the 
history, the contribution and the importance of the universal museum as a 
concept."

Mr- de Montebello said that the statement was first discussed at an 
international meeting of museum directors held in Munich last October. 

He said it began as a largely European initiative; another museum director, 
speaking on condition of anonymity, said it began as a "call for help" from 
Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum.

Greece bas been lobbying hard to have the Parthenon marbles returned 
to Athens for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, where they would be the 
centerpiece of a new museum being built at the Acropolis.

The Greek campaign began in earnest some 20 years ago when Melina 
Mercouri, then minister of culture, made the return of the marbles a matter 
of national pride. "The marbles were martyred by an Englishman to 
decorate his house," said the fiery actress. 

"It was an act of barbarism. For Greeks the Parthenon isn't just any 
monument, it's the monument. It represents our soul."

Interestingly, neither the British Museum noir any other museum in 
Britain are listed among the signatories of the statement.

Many major works of art over the centuries have ended up in museums 
far from their place of origin, and disputes over ownership surface 
periodically. 

Lord Elgin obtained Turkish permission to remove the marbles 
from the Parthenon when he was ambassador to the Ottomon Empire, of 
which Greece was then a part. 

They were later sold to the British government, which insists to this day that the 
marbles were legally obtained.

"Today museums would not condone what people did 200 years ago," Mr- de 
Montebello said. "But you cannot rewrite history. 

Those were different times, with different ethics and different mores." 
Mr- de Montebello said.

Evangelos Venizelos, the Greek culture minister, said the return of the so-called 
Elgin marbles has nothing to do with claims for the repatriation of other cultural assets.

"We do not intend to claim other fragments of friezes on display in other museums 
and which are not linked with programs like the one we have for the Acroplis Museum 
and the Parthenon," Mr- Venizelos said.

The Italian government recently returned a small piece of the Parthenon 
frieze. Mr. Venizelos, who received the fragment, said its return was a gesture 
of "great symbolic significance."