Ferdie Rous

Tuesday

Ferdie Rous

Cambridge, ‘whiteness’ and the politicisation of Classics

In Cambridge University’s latest push to right the wrongs of history, its Museum of Classical Archaeology will add some signage to explain the ‘whiteness’ of its collection of Greek and Roman statues. The Classics faculty, of which the museum is part, has taken this great and noble mission upon itself in response to an open

Thursday

Ferdie Rous

The aesthetic prejudice towards white classical statues

In the 1930s curators at the British Museum, under orders from Lord Duveen, a generous donor, scoured and hacked at the friezes and statues of their Parthenon collection. They were trying to remove the smudges and stains thought to be discolouration, to restore the marbles to their original colour — white. But it wasn’t discolouration;