My Life is full of Life-Ruiners

But that guy deserved a Best Actor in a Comedy Emmy Award here.   

He gone

Bonus:

Mr Blobby: J̡̼̓̓ͮ͑ͩͭ̇͞A̧̬̙̹̝̻̼ͯ̑͆̉̿C̯̬̯̬̤̻̦̞̎̐̈̏́͗̀̐͘Kͭ҉̹̼̭̹̻͢

Let’s get this party started, shall we?

“Contrary to the sanctified treatment of objects in these museums, there have been cases in Africa where artworks have temporarily left the museum to be used in rituals.”

Europeans, clutching their pearls: But it is Art, it cannot be soiled by the hands of the masses who created it!!

Then I read a big long paragraph from a French museum director that in summary reads: Hey everyone, let’s start from scratch and pretend colonialism never happened. That good? Does that work for everyone? Awesome. 

“…cultural objects from the area which is now Iraq are being used to promote BP [Oil], which supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.”

So y’all just gonna an oil company sponsor an exhibit of dubiously obtained Iraqi artifacts? Cool, cool, no colonialist undertones there.

“[D]irector of the British Museum Hartwig Fischer said that while the museum’s trustees were open to all forms of cooperation, “the collections have to be preserved as whole.””

You mean, all those collections donated from wealthy individuals who pillaged the entire world? If you really believe this I’ve got a simple solution for you: return the entire damn collection.

“Unlike Nazi-looted art, what was taken in the former colonies are not recognized as criminally obtained under international law.”

Hi yeah what the actual fuck

Then there’s the Parthenon Marbles, and if you don’t know, it’s a whole big Thing with a near comical backstory. But this post is long enough as is, and I don’t want to bore you. In short: Britain has bunch of the carvings and statues that were left in the Greek Parthenon, and Greece wants them back. Here are some choice bits from the British Museum’s current official stance on the marbles:

“Archaeologists worldwide are agreed that the surviving sculptures could never be re-attached to the structure.”

That is??? Not the issue??? No one is suggesting this???

“acting with the full knowledge and permission of the Ottoman authorities”

Really? You sure about that? Because it seems like no one else agrees with you on that. Also, even if there was clear permission, saying “The empire that conquered Greece told us we could take them” doesn’t exactly strengthen your case.

“the Greek authorities have now removed all the architectural sculptures from the Parthenon to the Acropolis Museum. They have thus completed a process begun by Lord Elgin 200 years ago”

Are… are you suggesting that Greece only wants to preserve its heritage because you wanted to first? Seriously? I’d be damn careful about touting yourself as paragons of historical preservation, Britain.

“The Museum is a unique resource for the world: the breadth and depth of its collection allows the world’s public to re-examine cultural identities and explore the connections between them.”

And how did your collection get so big, might I ask? Oh, you don’t know? Because you’re not willing to do the research on how most of these artifacts were acquired? Fascinating.

“This display does not alter the Trustees’ view that the sculptures are part of everyone’s shared heritage and transcend cultural boundaries.”

Guys I’m dying they sound like an entitled white boy in an intro to philosophy class

By the way, this document that is less than 1,000 words mentions that the public can view the them “free of charge” no less than 3 times.

Fun times.

Since you can’t dig anywhere in Greece (especially right by the Acropolis) without hitting ruins or artifacts, they built a glass floor so that visitors can see the ruins below the building.

A huge part of the design for the new building was to emphasize that Greece is ready and capable of caring for the Elgin Marbles (a huge defense the British Museum will give is that colonized countries don’t have the resources to care for the artifacts properly). So they went out of their way to make this as clear as possible.

The top floor of the building is entirely devoted to the metopes and friezes around the Parthenon. Like, so devoted that they even oriented the top floor to align with the actual Parthenon

So if you walk around the floor, everything is oriented as if you were walking around the actual Parthenon.

So the two ends of the floor are dedicated to the two pediments. And they were very particular with how they’re displayed.

Wow there sure are a lot of things missing.

They left space for where the Elgin Marbles should be. All of the pieces are labelled. For all of the missing pieces, there is a sign saying that that piece is in the British Museum. It’s pretty hard to miss when entire sections are not there.

They have separate room devoted to these statues, with a spotlight shining on the empty spot where the sixth one is supposed to be. It was the saltiest museum I have ever been to, and I was living. My favorite part was when the tour guide pleaded to us to write to the British Museum and ask them to return the artifacts, and an older man from India muttered under his breath, “Ha! Good luck with that.”

That aside, it’s also one of the most beautiful museums I have ever been in. The architecture is stunning. If you ever get a chance, absolutely go to it.

For those who don’t know the story behind why all these Greek statues are in Britain, buckle up for a wild ride.

The Parthenon has a storied history, obviously, as it is was an incredible temple in a major Mediterranean port. It had started to show wear and tear over the years, and different people had attempted at various points to “save” it, or at least save the carvings. Most of the time, these attempts did more harm than good.

Then along comes Thomas Bruce, a Scottish nobleman more commonly know as Lord Elgin. Between 1799-1803 he acts as British ambassador to the Ottoman empire, which controlled the entire region that is now Greece. He gets really interested in the old works of the classical civilizations and asks the Sultan of the Ottoman empire if he can undertake an extensive study and recording of the art at the Acropolis in Athens. Not only does the Sultan say yes, his agreement states that Elgin can “take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon.” It is agreed by all parties who are not the British Museum that the Sultan was referring only to the various pieces that were scattered across the ground, but not anything still standing.

Elgin interpreted this wording to mean, “Take anything you want. Go absolutely hog wild.” So he did. He sawed many of the marble carvings off the building to make them easier to transport, which did damage to both the carvings and structure of the building itself. Here’s my favorite part: one of the ships he was using to transport the marbles sank. When Elgin found out, he sent a letter to local authorities asking them to retrieve the cargo, which he referred to as “stones of no interest to anyone but myself.”

He took literal metric tons of artwork, which he wanted to use to decorate his home back in Britain. Except he poured so much money into this project that he went into debt and had to sell the marbles. Parliament bought them (which was not a popular decision at the time) and put them in a public museum. Then in 1832 Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire, and the marbles have been a point of contention in Greek-British relations ever since.

Here’s another quote from the British Museum displaying an astonishing degree of ethnocentrism!

“The public display of the sculptures from spring 1807 encouraged Hellenists in their love of ancient Greece while, at the same time, it inspired the Philhellene movement in its sympathy for the inhabitants of modern Greece and their struggle for independence.”

The most recent volley in this fight was Britain saying, “well, we can’t give you the marbles, your museum is too dinky to display them in their full splendor.” In response, Greece built the above museum.

Before I go on my tangent, I’m a museum professional with a Master’s degree in Museum Studies, which I just completed this past May, and during which I did an entire course about Native cultures and museums, so we focused a lot on return, recovery, and repatriation.

Now, back to the Parthenon Marbles. We had limited space for the course response, so here is what I wrote (we had to argue against or in favor of the return of the marbles), which I will expand on below:

“The Parthenon Sculptures should be returned to Greece. They were obtained under questionable circumstances, even in the time that they were acquired, and were displayed in a way that did not do the sculptures justice. Furthermore, the Parthenon Sculptures were damaged beyond repair while they were in the hands of the British, which should be argument enough that they belong back in Greece, where they originated. Although one could argue that Greece was not a unified country at the time that the Parthenon Sculptures, these sculptures were made for Athens and for the goddess of Athena, whose temple they adorned. The Parthenon Sculptures may not be able to return to the Parthenon itself, but there is now a facility dedicated to archaeological objects and artifacts found in the Acropolis in Athens so that they will have a proper home, displayed as they were meant to be seen when they are returned. The British Museum has already lost the argument of whether the Parthenon Sculptures would be in better care in Athens after they had damaged the sculptures beyond repair, which caused some of the finer details of the sculptures to be damaged without hope of restoring what was filed off. The pigmentation of the sculptures is now lost because of their need to create a more “white” sculpture, which is the opposite of how the Parthenon Sculptures were to be displayed and enjoyed. Both Greece and the goddess Athena deserve their sculptures back, as this is where the context and the full glory of the sculptures can truly be appreciated how they were meant to be seen.”

The questionable circumstances have already been outlined above so I won’t bother expanding on that one, as everyone made the points that I would have.

They are displayed in the British Museum in a way that is quite different than the way they were intended to be viewed, but the museum in Greece would have them at the proper viewing position.

During the time that the British Museum had the marbles, during the time where they felt that the ancient sculptures should be more white, they scraped off the sculptures, which destroyed the finer details of the marbles and made us lose what could have possibly shown how the sculptures had been painted. But we won’t have that now, and the sculptures are completely damaged.

The argument that Greece wasn’t Greece when all of this happened is ridiculous when the country is requesting their heritage back - these sculptures were taken while that area of Greece was under occupation. How is this any different than the art that was seized during the Nazi occupation in different European countries? Even if there was an “official” document saying that Elgin could take the marbles, even if people of Athens were against the removal, what could they possibly have done? We know a lot of people sold their art to the Nazis because they were afraid of what would be done to them if they didn’t - I would imagine something similar might have been the case for people who didn’t want the Parthenon Sculptures removed, but what could they have done?

The argument of “the sculptures can’t be returned to the Parthenon” is also moot, because that’s not what they would be doing with them anyway.

The sculptures belong to Greece and the goddess Athena, so the city they were made for is where they belong.

Finally, the argument of the people being able to see the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum for free versus the cost it would be in the museum in Greece is also some nonsense, especially if you know why museums charge for entry and what the entry fees go towards. You care about the Parthenon Marbles? Pay the fee to go see them in Greece and make sure you leave extra Euro as a donation if you can. 

OH WOW THIS IS BEAUTIFUL 

wired: Aziraphale IS gay because he’s still living in the 19th century and sees gender and sexuality as inextricably tied together

Men of Rohan: The glories of war are only a means to an end. All I desire is the saftey of my people and peace for my country.

Galadriel: Nevermind I love them have some presents. 

Gandalf: …

Men of Rohan: The glories of war are only a means to an end. All I desire is the saftey of my people and peace for my country.

Galadriel: Nevermind I love them have some presents. 

Gandalf: …