British Museum Considers Returning Elgin Marbles

I’m in Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island in Maine for vacation now. I call it the Land of the Blue-Eyed Blonds. There are few redoubts of old WASP America left, but this is one of them. I love seeing our friends, and the sea air is infinitely therapeutic. I’ll write a couple of pieces about the arts in Maine before returning to Nashville topics and writing about my visit to museums in Huntsville and Birmingham.

I had so nice a visit to the Parthenon in Nashville that I’ll add a coda to my piece from Thursday. Originally conceived for the 1897 Centennial Exposition saluting Tennessee’s statehood and rebuilt in the late ’20s, it’s a 1:1 replica of the Parthenon in Athens. It’s not a denuded ruin, though. It looks, scholars think, like the Parthenon circa 400 b.c., except Nashville’s is on terra plana, not a hill, and it’s made from aesthetic concrete, not marble.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

I’m in Seal Harbor on Mount Desert Island in Maine for vacation now. I call it the Land of the Blue-Eyed Blonds. There are few redoubts of old WASP America left, but this is one of them. I love seeing our friends, and the sea air is infinitely therapeutic. I’ll write a couple of pieces about the arts in Maine before returning to Nashville topics and writing about my visit to museums in Huntsville and Birmingham.

I had so nice a visit to the Parthenon in Nashville that I’ll add a coda to my piece from Thursday. Originally conceived for the 1897 Centennial Exposition saluting Tennessee’s statehood and rebuilt in the late ’20s, it’s a 1:1 replica of the Parthenon in Athens. It’s not a denuded ruin, though. It looks, scholars think, like the Parthenon circa 400 b.c., except Nashville’s is on terra plana, not a hill, and it’s made from aesthetic concrete, not marble.