it is “madness to want all works to return to where they were made”, says an art historian

“If everyone recovers the art they have created there will be no more museums that will have foreign works”, explains Saturday, November 27 on franceinfo Didier Rykner, journalist, art historian and founder of the online press magazine latribunedelart.com, which focuses on current events in the history of art and Western heritage, then that Greece relaunch its campaign for the return of the Parthenon friezes. It is “a folly to want all works to return to where they were made” he asserts.

franceinfo: Why is there such pressure on the British Museum where these friezes are and not on other museums?

Didier Rykner: I guess that’s because a lot of the sculptures from the Parthenon are kept in the British Museum. The Louvre has very few. It should also be remembered that nearly a third is kept in Greece. This request is something that has been coming back regularly for a very long time and which has not yet come to fruition. These works were taken away legally at the time, so there is no legal obligation. If they return, they will return to a museum in Greece, there is no question of putting them back on the Parthenon.

How do you explain these new debates around works of art?

We may wonder what all these people want who want the works to return. Do we want all French works to return to France? At that time we could ask for the cloister of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert which is located in New York. Do we want everything to come back to Greece, Africa, etc.? In Africa it is said that 90% of African works are outside the country which is false. China claims a lot of works which were looted during the siege of the Summer Palace and which are found in France. “What is this madness to want all works to return to where they were made? It means that ultimately art is not universal and that it must necessarily be in the country where it was created. That’s absurd. “

“We have entered a totally crazy spiral. If everyone recovers the art they have created, there will be no more museums that will have foreign works.”

Didier Rykner

to franceinfo

Some countries do not have the means to have works like the Louvre or the British Museum. Can this explain these recalls?

We are talking about Parthenon friezes which are outside the market since they are in a museum. In Africa, there are very rich people who can collect. What we learn as we go is that there is more African art than we think but that some do not want to put it in museums because they think that museums will not know not keep them. There is a very nationalist side and that scares me a little. These are issues that are everywhere and more and more significant since Emmanuel Macron wanted to return works to Benin. He opened Pandora’s box.