British Museum: commercial exploitation of priceless relics

by Chen Xi

In an act that Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni condemned as "provocative indifference" the British Museum hosted a lavish fundraiser at £2,000 per ticket last weekend. Dubbed the "Pink Ball" and held in the room housing the Parthenon’s “Elgin Marbles”, it ignited fierce criticism and revived long-standing debates over cultural ethics and colonial restitution. The high-profile fund-raising dinner in the Parthenon Marbles room, featuring 800 A-list guests, including rock legend Mick Jagger and supermodel Naomi Campbell The Times reported.
The uproar underscores a deeper crisis – the museum's mission to safeguard humanity's shared legacy is being systematically undermined by commercial greed and colonial-era double standards. Such commercial exploitation has surely betrayed the sanctity of civilisation.
As one of the world's oldest and most revered public institutions, the British Museum claims its mission is to preserve human history for future generations. Yet its decision to transform a space holding ancient Greek sculptures into a backdrop for champagne toasts and celebrity photos reveals a troubling departure from that very purpose.
Mendoni's statement highlighted the core issue: "The safety, integrity, and ethics of the monuments should be the main concern of the British Museum… such actions are offensive to cultural assets and endanger the exhibits themselves". 
Her criticism echoes a broader consensus among archaeologists and heritage experts: When artefacts are treated as party decor, their dignity is stripped, and their physical safety is at risk.
This is not the first time that the museum has blurred the line between culture and commerce. In 2024, the same room was used for a fashion show, drawing similar protests from Greece. Each such event reinforces the perception that the museum's leadership views its collections, particularly those acquired under colonial contexts, as assets to monetise rather than heritage to protect.
Greece's case is not unique. China, Egypt and Nigeria, among others, have long demanded the return of their stolen heritage. 
Egyptian archaeologist and Egypt's former minister of state for antiquities affairs, Zahi Hawass, who is leading a petition for the return of the country's priceless Rosetta Stone from the British Museum, has highlighted the psychological trauma of seeing national icons displayed in former colonisers' museums. These narratives expose a colonial-era hierarchy in which Western institutions dictate cultural ownership, perpetuating historical injustice.  
The British Museum has exhibited the Parthenon marbles since their acquisition from Lord Elgin in 1816.
Due to the 1963 British Museum Act, the law prevents the museum from returning any of its collection permanently except in very limited circumstances. However, legal hurdles are not insurmountable, especially when there is political and moral will. 
For example, in 2024, more than 200 ancient pre-Hispanic artefacts ranging from ceramics to important works of indigenous art were successfully reclaimed by Peru from collectors and institutions around the world.
What the Pink Ball reveals is that the real obstacle may not be the law, but an attitude. If the British Museum is serious about being a museum for the world, it should stop treating world heritage as its private party venue.
In fact, the tide is shifting. Recent years have seen growing momentum for relic repatriation. 
In 2022, Germany returned 22 artefacts looted in the 19th century to Nigeria. In 2025, Egypt successfully retrieved 25 smuggled artefacts from the USA, demonstrating that international cooperation works. 
China, as a leader in cultural heritage advocacy, has repatriated more than 2,000 artefacts since 2012, including the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts from the USA in 2025. 
Such cases inspire Greece, which proposed a cultural partnership to fill the British Museum's Greek galleries if the marbles are returned.  
Professor Huo Zhengxin from the China University of Political Science & Law says that there is no longer any substantial gap between China's ability to conduct cultural relic protection, restoration and research and that of Western countries. 
The British Museum, however, has been hit by a series of scandals involving stolen cultural relics in recent years and cannot even guarantee the safety of its collected cultural relics. 
Therefore, if countries with lost cultural relics, especially those in the Global South, can coordinate their positions and speak with a unified voice under international multilateral mechanisms, they can promote the further improvement and implementation of international rules.
Stamatios Boyatzis, a professor at the University of West Attica in Greece, also echoed that since Greece is now fully capable of safeguarding its own cultural relics, the British Museum should return them rather than using so-called conventions as an excuse.
He told the media during the 2025 Sanxingdui Forum that under the current international landscape, it is hoped that Greece, China and other more source countries of cultural relics can join hands to make their voices heard on the global stage.
In summary, the Parthenon Marbles controversy is a referendum on the ethics of cultural ownership. The British Museum's commercialisation of these artefacts is a moral abdication, symptomatic of a broader crisis in how Western institutions wield power over global heritage. 
As Greek Culture Minister Mendoni stated, the British Museum's actions "endanger the exhibits themselves," both physically and symbolically. It is time for the museum to listen, not just to the clinking of glasses, but to the voices of those whose history it holds.
Global Times

Greek communists call for return of Elgin Marbles

By New Worker correspondent

Campaigners at the British Museum

Greek communists have long supported the call for the return of the Parthenon friezes known as the ‘Elgin Marbles’ to Greece so that they can be put on permanent display at the Acropolis Museum in Athens. The marbles, dating back to the 5th Century BC, were removed by Lord Elgin between 1801 and 1812. In those days Greece was part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire and Elgin said their authorities had given him permission to take the marbles from the ruins of the Parthenon in Athens. This was challenged at the time by Lord Byron and other champions of Greek independence and later by Greeks academics following independence who said these priceless relics had been looted and that in any case they weren’t the Turks to give in the first place.
    Over the years these calls for their return were routinely rebuffed by the British Museum which has held the sculptures in its galleries since the early 1800s. But hopes of an amicable compromise were raised following talks between the British Museum's chairman George Osborne and Greek premier Kyriakos Mitsotakis in London last November.
    According to reports in the Greek press the former Tory Chancellor set the ball rolling with a discreet meeting with Mitsotakis in London the year before in November 2021. Further talks with other Greek ministers followed culminating in the meeting with Mitsotakis when the Greek leader was in London for talks last year.
    Neither side revealed what was actually on the table during these talks but the Parthenon Project, a campaign group set up by the Greek magnate John Lefas that includes former Tory and Labour culture ministers as well as the actor Stephen Fry, hinted that the return of the marbles would be linked to a cultural exchange that would bring other outstanding classical Greek works of art such as “Agamemnon’s mask”, Nestor's Cup and the bronze Jockey of Artermision to London.
    A spokesperson for the Parthenon Project said: “With widespread support for reunification amongst both the Greek and British public, and constructive dialogue going on based on mutual trust, a solution to this long-standing issue is finally within reach.
    “We have argued for a deal that is beneficial to both Greece and Britain, centred on a cultural partnership between the two countries.
    “This would see the British Museum continue in its role as a 'museum of the world' displaying magnificent Greek artefacts as part of rotating exhibits, with the Parthenon Sculptures reunited in their rightful home in Athens.'
    But sadly these hopes were dashed last week when Culture Minister Michelle Donelan told BBC Radio that the Parthenon marbles belong in the UK and that returning them would "open the gateway to the question of the entire contents of our museums".
    Her remarks were dismissed as “unacceptable” by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). The Greek communists said that “based on the ‘law of the strongest’ the Minister of Culture of Great Britain has categorically rejected the obvious demand of the Greek people for the restoration of the stolen Parthenon sculptures to their natural place”.
    The KKE also criticised Mitsotakis’ conservative New Democracy (ND) government for cynically exploiting the campaign for the return of the Elgin Marbles for political purposes.
    “The ND government didn't hesitate to exploit the desire for the return of the looted sculptures by using it in its electoral propaganda, cultivating impressions of a successful outcome of the issue through its own actions, while it knew that the problem was impossible to solve through ‘under the table’ discussions with the British Museum's management instead of the British government.
    “The [Greek] government must be also held accountable because its adventurist tactics undermine the timeless demand, allowing the circulation of dangerous views about the borrowing and exchanging of the Parthenon sculptures with other priceless antiquities, something that means the legalisation of the theft.
    “All the previous governments bear responsibility for perpetuating the problem, because they never exerted substantial pressure to end the illegal possession of the country's cultural treasures by the British Museum and other major museums of EU countries.
    “The urgent demand of our people is the permanent restoration of the Parthenon sculptures as an inalienable part of the monumental ensemble of the Acropolis, as well as of all the other treasures of the ancient cultural heritage which have, at times, been objects of looting or antiquities theft”.