With origins within the fifth century BCE, the Parthenon Marbles are a set of architectural sculptures that have been constructed into the temple of Athena, often known as the Parthenon – a masterpiece of classical Greek structure and an everlasting image of historic Greece. On this video essay, Evan Puschak (aka the Nerdwriter) explains how, within the early nineteenth century, roughly half of the these sculptures, with some further objects from the Acropolis of Athens, got here to be housed on the British Museum in London, the place they’re nonetheless on show at this time, some 2,000 miles away from their unique website. In his dive into the continuing controversy over the Marbles, Puschak particulars the historic tides and imprecise authorized language that led to the switch of those priceless antiquities from Ottoman-controlled Greece to England. In doing so, he hints on the broader reckoning round artefacts, ethics and the legacy of colonialism dealing with museums world wide.
