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Article: Milestones; New Acropolis Museum opens.
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- June 27, 2009
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A new tribute to the Parthenon
AS GREECE'S first Socialist culture minister in 1981, the late Melina Mercouri, a flamboyant actress best known for playing a golden-hearted prostitute in a film called "Never on Sunday", decided to make her mark in politics by campaigning for the return of the Elgin marbles from the British Museum (BM).
Mercouri's pleas to officials in London were ignored, but she scored two successes. First, the fifth-century-BC sculptures that Lord Elgin, a British diplomat, removed from the Acropolis temples in 1801-05 and later sold to the BM have become more widely known as the Parthenon marbles--the name chosen by Mercouri to ...