DUAS Newsletter: February 2023

 
Welcome to the February Edition of the DUAS Loop!
 
What’s On
Don’t forget about our Tuesday Life Drawing and Thursday Sessions. As always, please check the Instagram pages @dulifedrawing and @duthursdaysessions for more details and updates.

Art Social with Sarah Stamp
Wednesday 1 February 4-6pm
at the Oriental Museum
Join artist Sarah stamp for a paper collage, conversation and creative writing workshop.
Suitable for all abilities and levels of experience with making and being creative. It will be an informal social environment where participants can have a go at being creative in a safe and friendly space.
 
World Economic Funfair – 14 February
Tuesday 14th February, 10am – 3pm
Durham Town Hall, Market Place, Durham DH1 3NJ
Opportunity for students to participate and help facilitate economics-meets-culture creative ideation workshop.
 
Led by UK leading creative agency Bompas & Parr (bompasandparr.com), this workshop brings together 20 people from a wide range of backgrounds (economists, arts leaders, GRT reps, showpeople, policy makers, community members and others) to generate ideas for an exciting new cultural event – ‘ The World Economic Funfair’.
 
We have spaces for a handful of students who will be joining in conversations, leading small breakout sessions, making observations. Free lunch provided and travel costs covered.
If you are interested, please email Ged on: Gerard.p.matthews@durham.ac.uk.

Art Prize Submission Deadline
Monday 13th February, 3pm 
This year's Art Prize is drawing to a close on 13th February, be sure to get your submissions in before then if you want to be in the running for a £1500 prize!
 
Artistic Insight
A big and ongoing issue in the art world is the ongoing negotiations involving the Elgin Marbles and whether or not they should be returned to their home country, Greece. 
 
For those who weren’t dragged around the British Museum multiple times as a child and are therefore blissfully unaware of the controversy surrounding this collection of ancient marble sculptures and structures from the Parthenon the Acropolis of Athens, I hope this article will enlighten you on some of the details surrounding them. 
 
The marbles are key cultural artefacts, made between 447BC and 432BC that consist of a frieze which shows the procession of Panathenaic festival (the commemoration of the birthday of the goddess Athena), a series of metopes (sculpted relief panels) depicting the battle between Centaurs and Lapiths at the marriage-feast of Peirithoos and figures of the gods and legendary heroes from the temple's pediments. The Parthenon in which they were originally housed was used as an ammunition store in 1687 and sustained significant damage after an explosion. Therefore, much of its structures and decorative material are precious and are served in museums for safe keeping as it is impossible to reconstruct the monument completely. 
 
The first level of controversy comes with how the marbles ended up in the British Museum collections. Agents of Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin agents removed around half the surviving Parthenon sculptures and in the period from 1801 to 1812 and sent them to back to Britain. Though it is claimed they were removed with permission of the Ottoman officials who exercised authority in Athens at the time and an 1816 UK parliamentary inquiry allegedly corroborated this, many dispute the veracity of this claim. Some, including Lord Byron likened Elgin’s actions to theft and vandalism. It was later in 1816 that Elgin sold the artefacts to the British Museum. 
 
In 1983 the Greek government opened a formal request for the permanent return to Greece of all the Parthenon Sculptures and, there have been various meetings and discussions around the topic since then. As of December 2022, there were reports of the talks surrounding the marbles coming to a more advanced stage and a Greek insider told the BBC “An agreement is 90% complete, but a critical 10% remains unresolved. It's hard to get there, but it's not impossible. Significant progress has been made”. Yet an official resolution has not yet been reached and anyone can guess how long it will take to resolve that last 10%. 

Don't forget to find us on Instagram for more updates and news about upcoming events!



That's all for this month, thank you for reading!
Hannah Larkin, DUAS Development and Outreach Officer.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Introducing: Petra Szemán and 'Vug'

Introducing: Janet Rogers and Crushed Chilli Gallery

DUAS Newsletter: March 2023