George Clooney may be many things, but an art historian he is not. Speaking at a press conference promoting his new film The Monuments Men, both he and co-star Bill Murray waded into the long-running row about the Elgin Marbles. The British Museum should hand them back, they both said. Murray began with a twee plea:
‘They’ve had a very nice stay here, certainly. London’s gotten crowded. There’s plenty of room back there in Greece. England can take the lead on this kind of thing – letting art go back where it came from. The Greeks are nothing but generous. They would loan it back once in a while.’
Clooney then waded in with a measly dose of cultural finesse:
‘Even in England, the polling is in favour of returning the marbles to the Pantheon [sic]. The Vatican returned parts of it, the Getty returned parts of it [the Vatican gave a section of the Parthenon frieze to the Acropolis museum in Athens on loan; the J Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles repatriated looted treasures last year].
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