Acropolis Acrimony: MacGregor Condescends to the Greeks

Now that the Greeks, emboldened by the imminent completion of the New Acropolis Museum, have ramped up their rhetoric calling for the return of the Acropolis marbles, the British Museum's director, Neil MacGregor, who had previously sounded nominally receptive to the idea of lending the marbles to the new museum (if the Greeks accepted British ownership), appears to have ramped up his own rhetoric against the Greeks. His condescension borders on insult.

Richard Lacayo of Time magazine, in his Looking Around blog, recently scored an in-depth, revelatory two-part interview with MacGregor---here and here.

Some MacGregor quotes:

No Trustees in the Anglo-Saxon legal system could lend to people who didn't recognize their title....The Trustees [of the British Museum] have said they would not consider the removal of all the marbles at one time....They would consider a [loan] request [if Greece recognized British ownership], and it would then be a question of how long the request was for, whether the objects were fit to travel, all those things....

Elgin removed them, and it was...bringing the marbles to London that actually allowed the European educated world, French, German, Russian, Italian and British, to discover for the first time what great Greek sculpture was. And this is the purpose of a museum like this---to bring things not previously appreciated for their proper worth, and put them in the context of other things from around the world.

Are the Greeks not part of the "European educated world"? Did they not appreciate the marbles "for their proper worth" and promote their appreciation as such? I assume that MacGregor would say that he didn't intend his words to convey insulting implications.

But they do.