Not a Good Time to Visit the Acropolis: Marbles Taken Off View

Digital Fly-Through of the New Acropolis Museum

I saw the above video four years ago in New York, when it was presented by the Greek Culture Ministry as part of a larger exhibition on Athens' planned New Acropolis Museum. (For more on that exhibition, go here and click on "03.06.03.)

Since then, much progress has been made. Kathimerini, Greece's English-language newspaper, reported yesterday:

[The Acropolis Museum] will close today so that preparations can get under way for the transfer of some 300 ancient artifacts to the new museum that is being built just 400 meters away....Three giant lifting cranes will be used to help move 5th-century B.C. antiquities from the Parthenon to the New Acropolis Museum at the foot of the hill.

Unmoved are the marbles from the British Museum, which owns more than half of the Parthenon frieze. In what Greek culture officials then called "a bit of propaganda," the above video shows the new museum fitted out with the complete set of marbles. In actuality, the installation will leave gaps in the spots that should be occupied, in the continuing sequence of the ancient procession depicted, by the British-owned contingent. The Greeks have never given up hope that the expatriate marbles would return. But it looks unlikely that those hopes will be realized any time soon.

The new museum is expected to open early next year. But these plans keep getting postponed: Remember when it was supposed to open for the 2004 Olympics? The last time I wrote about this Bernard Tschumi-designed project, it was to open "the first half of 2007."

It's just GOT to happen, eventually!