A New Home for the Acropolis Treasures	March 11, 2003
by Mark Rose

Bird's-eye view of the New Parthenon Museum with the Acropolis in the background. (Onassis Cultural Center, New York) [LARGER IMAGE]

In The New Acropolis Museum, the Onassis Cultural Center has brought another fine short-term exhibit to New York. It features preliminary drawings, artist's renditions, a large-sized model, and 3-D video walk-through of architect Bernard Tschumi's design for the new museum now being built at the foot of the Athenian Acropolis.

At the start of construction, ancient remains were found at the building site, raising concerns that part of ancient Athens would be sacrificed for the museum. An extensive excavation was undertaken, revealing foundation walls, drainage pipes, and other remains from private houses of the fourth-sixth centuries A.D. and a seventh-century residence with a large hall and round tower. Given the magnitude of the finds, the museum's design was altered both to limit damage to the ruins and to incorporate them into the overall experience of visitors. A system of support columns, strategically placed so as to disturb the archaeological remains as little as possible, holds the museum aloft. (It is said to be able to move on the columns, limiting damage in case of an earthquake.)

The museum's first floor has an auditorium and lobby between which a wide ramp leads up to the second floor. Transparent sections in the ramp's floor allow visitors to gaze at the exposed archaeological remains below. Along the sides of the ramp and as freestanding installations there will be artifacts recovered from the Sanctuary of the Nymphs, the Sanctuary of Asklepios, and elsewhere on the slopes of the Acropolis. The second floor will include a hall with Archaic period finds from the Acropolis on one side and, on the other, a hall containing post-Parthenon finds--including the sculptures and friezes from the Nike Temple and the Karyatids from the Erechtheion--and the Roman collection. The Parthenon gallery, a glass enclosure of the same size and orientation as the temple itself, occupies the third floor.

When I first saw a rendering of Tschumi's design for the museum, I had misgivings about it fitting into the local environment and being a suitable a home to the treasures of the Acropolis. It seemed big, intrusive, and flashy, more about the architect than the monuments and sculptures. I was wrong. If you have had doubts, go to The New Acropolis Museum and see if they aren't answered.

[LARGER IMAGE]	[LARGER IMAGE]
Left, a relief fragment from the old Athena temple that preceded the Parthenon. A colored stone insert for the eye and the ear, carved as a separate piece, are now missing. Right, a votive relief shows Herakles, Nike, and Hebe. (©First Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities, Greece)

In addition to displays relating to the museum building, The New Acropolis Museum presents four ancient sculptures that have never before been seen outside Greece. My favorite, artistically and historically, is a fragmentary marble slab with a horse head in relief (Acropolis Museum 1340), possibly part of the frieze from the old temple of Athena, which was destroyed by the Persians. Carved in the last quarter of the sixth century B.C., it was found west of the Parthenon in 1835. A fifth-century B.C. marble votive relief (AM 1329) shows Herakles standing before a winged Nike or Victory who crowns him with her right hand; Nike's left hand is draped over shoulder of another female, possibly Hebe, who was the daughter of Zeus and Hera and married to Herakles. The other sculptures are a late fifth-century B.C. votive relief with the head of Athena (AM 2441) and a stele from 373/372 B.C. with a horse in relief and an inscription honoring Alketas, king of the Molossians (AM 1349). All four are displayed in front of ground-glass panels, a foretaste of how Tschumi has divided the interior space of the exhibition areas in the museum.

The New Acropolis Museum does not address the restitution of the Parthenon marbles beyond an introductory note in the catalogue in which Greece's minister of culture, Evangelos Venizelos, observes that "The construction of the New Acropolis Museum offers the opportunity for Britain to make it possible to reunify the sculptures of the Parthenon for future generations. Until such time as they return, the spaces for the metopes, frieze, and figures of the pediment will remain void--as a constant reminder of this unfulfilled debt to world heritage." For his part, Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, announced last month that he would not consider returning the sculptures, even as a long-term loan. According to archaeologist Dimitrios Pandermalis, president of the Organization for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, the Parthenon Gallery will be completed in 2004. Presumably, the 20-meter-long section of frieze that is in Athens will be installed then, regardless of the disposition of the sculptures now in London.

Artist's rendering of the Parthenon gallery, the new museum's glass-enclosed top floor, showing the proposed display of the sculptured frieze slabs and the view of the Acropolis and Parthenon from it. (Onassis Cultural Center, New York) [LARGER IMAGE]

And what of the old Acropolis Museum? Its fate, says Pandermalis, is undecided. It may be retained as a museum documenting the restoration of the Parthenon and other monuments, or it may be torn down.

(The New Acropolis Museum was on view at the Onassis Cultural Center until April 9, 2003.)

Mark Rose is executive and online editor of ARCHAEOLOGY.

© 2003 by the Archaeological Institute of America archive.archaeology.org/online/reviews/acropseum/