Hi i love your lecture on the history of architecture and some of us know when you are talking about architecture and when its a tongue and cheek remark to make the lecture interesting. As for the long discourse on Elgin and his love for art etc, this is really a bit of hog wash. The English, French, Germans, Italian’s the Spanish and other colonialists thought thought it was their right to take back whatever spoils they could loot from all parts of the world ie Asia, Africa, South America. ie India. Iran, Iraq Egypt to name but a few countries. It will take a book to list all the articles that now need to be returned.
Do the Caryatids look like "slaves" to anyone? This is disputed among scholars. And as for "the Brits were probably over the limit on carry-on luggage" with regard to Elgin's taking a caryatid back the England - whilst it was purporting to be humour, the fact is that it is a sly, and loaded comment. One wonders how far Academe has gone in terms of how this kind of lefty misinformation has impacted their innocent students - students who desire learning, not political indoctrination. Disappointing, because I'd been enjoying Jackie Gruden's lectures hitherto.
It is rather disingenuous, and at best simplistic casually to assert that the sculptures were taken by Lord Elgin "because he thought it would be better for the British to have the Parthenon frieze". The truth is that after the Ottoman conquest, the Parthenon was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s. In 1687, an Ottoman ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment during a siege of the Acropolis. The resulting explosion severely damaged the entire Parthenon, its inner cella and its sculptures. From 1800 to 1803, Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the surviving sculptures, now known as the Elgin (or Parthenon) Marbles, with the permission of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. Elgin was a lover of art and antiquities. By his own account, he was concerned about damage being done to important artworks in the temples of Greece, then under Ottoman sway. Fearing that they would eventually be destroyed because of Turkish indifference, he asked permission of the Sublime Porte to have artists measure, sketch, and copy important pieces of sculpture and architectural detail for posterity. At length the request was granted - along with the authority “to take away any pieces of stone with old inscriptions or figures thereon.” Elgin then began selecting a vast store of the treasures for shipment to England. Among these were friezes, pediment sculptures, and fragmented statues from the cella (interior chamber) walls of the Parthenon; the northeast column, an anta capital, blocks of wall crown (crown molding), including architrave and cornice, and a caryatid from the Erechtheum (a temple of Athena); and various other antiquities from Athens, Attica, and other sites. Had Elgin not done this, it remains a matter of dispute as to whether the sculptures would had survived the Parthenon's ensuing history on the Acropolis of Athens, including the damaging effects of modern acid rain, air pollution, and many other concerns regarding their perceived value in terms of civic appreciation, and of conservation.
