Universal Museum Concept & Debate at the Global London Colloquy June 19, 2012

As the start of the London Olympics approaches, pressure is mounting on the British Museum to reunify the Parthenon Marbles in what is universally acknowledged as their rightful home - the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, which opened in 2009. Greece's acute economic plight has merely amplified the need for a cultural gesture that many believe would have an immeasurable impact in kindling a sense of optimism and hope among the Greek people.

Amongst the distinguished speakers at the London colloquy is Dr Tom Flynn, who will sketch a brief history of the concept of the Universal Museum and will survey its current controversial status in relation to the repatriation of objects, and particularly to the case of the Parthenon Marbles. His talk will interrogate the function of these vast encyclopaedic collections in an increasingly 'globalised' world.

Most universal museums are struggling to respond to developing nations seeking to recover the material evidence of their past, much of which was appropriated by western powers during the imperial age. A stock response from western museum directors is to call for the establishment of more 'Universal' museums in developing nations. Is this a realistic aspiration or a strategy designed to deflect attention from a historical imbalance in the custodianship of cultural property? What is to be done?

Dr Tom Flynn will argue that instead of opening the notional 'floodgates' to more requests for return, the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles by the British Museum would light a beacon for a new era in global museum co-operation and cultural diplomacy. Such a gesture would reveal the 'Universal Museum' not as a retardataire institution looking back to the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, but as a visionary agent of humanitarian change in the twenty-first century.

Marlen Godwin
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