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General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
LONDON – Former interim British Museum Director Mark Jones has backed the idea of sharing the stolen Parthenon Marbles housed there for 200 years with Greece and said tourists should be charged to see them to raise money for the institution.
He told Britain’s The Sunday Times that foreign visitors should pay 20 Great British Pounds, the equivalent of $25.27 for admission to the gallery holding the stolen treasures the museum refuses to give back.
But he said the arrangement could include an oft-repeated proposal from museum officials to share them with Greece – earlier provisos were that Greece would have to give up ownership and send the museum other valuable artifacts held hostage.
Jones told the newspaper the financially-strapped museum needs funds to maintain its creaking infrastructure and support a potential partnership over the stolen marbles.
“If we ever find a way to create a partnership with the Greeks for the Parthenon Marbles, we must find a way to fund it,” he said, to benefit the museum that has ignored international calls to send them back to Greece.
“The British Museum is also too small to do its job,” he told The Sunday Times.
“A master plan would include an increase in space and more space given over to facilities for visitors.”
According to the Independent, the British Museum requires an extensive renovation costing up to 500 million pounds ($641.43 million) a getting 58.92 million euros ($63.13 million) from British Petroleum for site maintenance.
“The money has to come from somewhere, either a major part of the funding has to be found out of taxation, which is difficult as the public finances are very stressed, or we need to reasonably charge (tourists.)”
One of the museum’s most noted trustees, Mary Beard, said the marbles should be sent around the world as “ambassadors” for Greek culture which would see them She said the question of whether the marbles should go back to Greece or stay in London “makes the poor old marbles into a child in a messy divorce case,” proposing the solution that both give them up.
The marbles were ripped off the Parthenon early in the 19th Century by Scottish diplomat Lord Elgin, who was an ambassador, and the museum said he had permission from the then ruling Ottoman Empire, although Turkey said he didn’t.
