How Not to Go About Building a Museum: Political Incompetency and a Torturous Construction Project

The New Acropolis Museum was conceived and built with one of its primary objectives to rebuff the long-standing claim that the Greeks had nowhere in which to adequately display the sculptures that had originally decorated the walls of the Parthenon, including those marbles removed by Lord Elgin in the early nineteenth century. Although opening to international acclaim in the summer of 2009, the inefficiency and expense surrounding the museum building project would be a source of embarrassment for those campaigning in support of the repatriation of the Parthenon sculptures to Athens. This chapter explores the problematic manner with which politicians, academics, architects, journalists and marbles repatriation campaigners sought to exploit the construction programme of the New Acropolis Museum to advance the argument for returning the disputed marbles to Athens, and the ill-judged attempt to have the museum up-and-running in time for the 2004 Athens Olympics.