Athens — Should the British Museum return the ancient sculpture known as the Parthenon Marble to Greece? Does the world of art contribute to global warming? Is the Digital Art Hot Market known as an NFT?
These are one of the most daunting challenges facing the world of art today. In particular, the question is how or not to return what many see as looted art, such as the Parthenon Marble, to a legitimate owner.
These and other issues last week Art for tomorrow A three-day meeting of art managers, artists, cultural entrepreneurs, gallerists, and collectors in connection with the Athens Conference and the New York Times. Among the notable guests was artist Jeff Koons. He talked about sending his latest work to the moon with the help of Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Brian Donnelly, well known as Kaws, recalled his beginnings as a graffiti artist. And billionaire Greek entrepreneur Dimitris Dascalopoulos recalls recently donating more than 350 works to museums such as Guggenheim and Tate.
Appropriately, the issue of restoration was discussed in front of the Parthenon 2500 years ago on the terrace of the Acropolis Museum, where about half of the marble sculptures that were part of the original freeze of the Parthenon remain. rice field. Others are in the British Museum, after Sir Elgin, the British ambassador of the Ottoman Empire, who ruled Greece at the time, dismissed them two centuries ago.
The claim to Greek marbles has not been successful, as the British Museum has been banned from offering collection items. But last week, the museum’s president, George Osborne, said, “A lot of prerequisites” and “a load of red lines.”
Since then, many British lawmakers have told Greek newspapers that the marble should be returned, and a group of scholars and supporters demonstrating the return of the sculpture at the British Museum on Monday.
Greece did not officially respond to Mr Osborne’s remarks at the meeting. Instead, the Secretary of the Acropolis Museum, Nikolaos Stanpolidis, issued a statement read aloud during his absence, explaining the Parthenon Marble as a symbol of Athenian democracy.
“The violent removal of half the freeze from the Parthenon can actually be thought of as splitting half of the participants into actual processes, splitting them uprooted and capturing them in a foreign land. “Masu,” said Stanpolidis in his statement. “It consists of criticism, interruption, division, and negligence of democratic ideas.”
“The question arises: who owns the” POW “? “He asked. “The museum where they are imprisoned, or where they were born?”
The British Museum wasn’t represented by a panel, but Tristram Hunt, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and one of the speakers, explained the legal ban on returning things.
In the late 1970s, he said, “African furniture and design works that were considered worthless, as well as South Asian monuments and sculptures.
Today, the new law on the return of cultural heritage was not a priority for politicians and voters, Hunt, a former member of parliament, said. Instead, museums like him “these, including as part of a long-term loan, even though the government in question said,” You want us to borrow something from you. ” I was working with the plaintiff government to “think about how to share the collection” stolen from us? “
British writer Tiffany Jenkins, a fellow panelist, supported the status quo. She left half of the marbles in Athens and the other half in London, and she claimed that it was “a really good situation.”
“Here you can see them in the context of pre-classical Athens,” she said. Look at them in the context of world civilization. “
“I think it’s in the best of each other,” she added.
Among the other issues raised at the conference was the future of NFTs. A digital certificate of ownership and authenticity that is valued in cryptocurrencies and stored on the blockchain.
NFT is an art market product that has been hotly traded since Mike Winkelmann, well known as digital artist Beeple, sold for $ 69.3 million at Christie’s online auction in March 2021. By the end of the year, NFT’s market capitalization had risen from $ 400 million to $ 16.7 billion.
But over the last few weeks, cryptocurrencies have fallen free and undermine the value of the digital artwork that accompanies them. And NFTs are facing criticisms about carbon dioxide emissions. According to a study by the University of Cambridge, mining Bitcoin (a major cryptocurrency) consumes more energy in a year than Pakistan.
Three NFT panel speakers, all engaged in media creation or trading, defended it as a legitimate artistic pursuit rather than an easy way to generate cash.
“We are a business after all and our revenue is to make money, but the big reason we joined the space was not to make money. It benefits our artists. It was to bring, “said Christiana Ine-Kimba Boyle, online sales director at Pace Gallery.
Given the low historical availability of traditional art markets, NFTs say, “It’s an opportunity for artists to offer their work to other markets at low prices, and the community grows.” Said.
She quoted the example of artist John Gerard, who released 196 unique NFTs in his work in editions. These didn’t represent staggering numbers, but they were still “volumes,” she said.
“Hype is undoubtedly a lot of interest in this area,” said Mazdak Sanii, CEO and co-founder of Avant Arte, the creative marketplace. Still, there were times when “more profound things were happening” in terms of an artistic community that connects talent and collectors.
Kenny Schachter, an NFT artist, writer and collector, dismissed the accusations that NFTs are more polluted than the shipment of private jets used to fly artwork and ultra-rich collectors to art fairs. .. He said cryptocurrencies are “on the brink of major change” as those carbon-neutral forms emerge.
As for the collapse price, they may have a silver lining.
“The crypto market has crashed more than 80% in the last seven months, and I welcome it,” he said. “Eliminate all excess bubbles and speculation, crime and fraud.
“Standing to the left are people who are interested in art, make things, and express themselves,” he added.
