01. MIFF program release! As always, planning what to see requires a little effort (250+ films running over three weeks). On my list are Yellow Letters, The Incomer, Blue Heron and How to Divorce During the War (plus dozens of others).
02. Fun things in the city:
- saw Insta-favourite, Jefferson Fisher, speak at Melbourne Town Hall – lots of nuggets including wonderful thoughts on how to manage estrangement within a family (and I think everyone left being a little bit in love with him).
- a quick spin around Finders Keepers Market (went specifically for Harper & Edie’s winter dresses).
- went to a taping of Nath Valvo‘s show. He makes me laugh so much.
03. Cooking: roasted rhubarb.
04. Watched: three docos via the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival
- En Silencio – it’s a soccer story (appropriate while the World Cup is on) and looks at what ‘recovery’ after injury truly means i.e. it’s not enough to have a doctor say that physically, you’ve recovered.
- The Broken R – about a man with Treacher Collins syndrome (his father has the same condition) and who, because of that, could not say his own name. He undergoes a huge amount of therapy in order to pronounce the letter ‘r’. The doco considers the meaning of inheritance and legacy (genetic, expectations, family experience).
- The Marbles – exploration of the debate around the reunification of cultural heritage, with a focus on the Parthenon Marbles. This doco was outstanding – see it if you can (and I’ve just put Stuff the British Stole by Marc Fennell on hold at the library).
05. Eating: Lune’s Freckle (chocolate croissant pastry, malt sablé biscuit, chocolate ganache).
06. Dinner at Mercadito Taqueria – zucchini and hibiscus tacos!
07. Listening: obsessed with Role Model’s new song, Joy.
Interesting. I only ever put rhubarb in pies, but then I didn’t really grow up in a household that used it. I started making the pies when my husband said he liked them.
I use it in pies and crumbles (and had a delicious strudel in Austria with rhubarb) but I mostly stew it (and chuck in some raspberries once it’s cooked and cooling). I eat stewed rhubarb, and this ‘roasted’ version with yogurt.
Oh, that sounds good. I usually put raspberries or cherries in my yogurt.
Stewed is very easy – I chop up two bunches of rhubarb and put them in a big pot with the juice of one orange and about 1/2 cup of raw sugar. Cook over low heat (with lid on) about 5-10 minutes until the rhubarb is soft. You don’t need to add any water – the orange juice is enough to make a thick syrup. Once cooked, I stir in frozen raspberries (as much as you like) – makes the syrup beautifully red and a little sweeter.
I have a great recipe that just involves mixing the raw rhubarb with a creamy mixture that’s like meringue and cooking it in a pie shell. The creamy part bursts through the lattice.
I find it so interesting that in a multicultural country where it is *so* not okay to say insulting things about other ethnicities (unless they’re Jews, of course), our ABC is cheerfully promoting anti-British feeling with its provocative program titling. No wonder statues of our C18 and C19th worthies are being desecrated or removed.
There will be a bewildered child in an Australian playground somewhere being abused for being British just as I was aged seven.
Those Elgin marbles would have been crushed up and sold for pebble-and-cactus gardens by now if they haven’t been bought at a time when the Greeks didn’t value them. But now they would be a tourist attraction, so they want them back…
The doco presented both sides of the debate (although leaned to reunification because no one from the British Museum was prepared to be interviewed about the Marbles). The clear message for keeping cultural heritage pieces was that the whole point of museums is that so people can see things from places they would be unlikely to visit/ otherwise see. It also talked about the importance of preserving and documenting pieces.
The case of the Marbles seems to be a legal one though. Apparently Elgin ‘took’ them without a written agreement (a firman) which were commonplace at the time. And it happened that he was building his country estate home in the Classical style… So there is much speculation about the legalities of the Marbles.
In terms of whether they would have been made into rubble… we don’t know that that would have happened. When I visited the Parthenon Museum a few years ago (and the Parthenon) there was certainly lots to look at, so pieces have been looked after.
Being a good caretaker was much of the British Museum’s case for keeping the Marbles, however, that was questioned in 2024 when it was revealed that up to 2,000 items had gone missing or were damaged (many of which turned up on eBay!) from the Museum and it was further revealed that the Museum did not catalogue and document all of their pieces. Suddenly the question of ‘safe keeping’ was in doubt.
The Marbles were the focus but the doco covered other pieces of cultural heritage, including from various indigenous cultures (obviously lots from Australia and New Zealand). I cannot see any case for human remains and pieces related to cultural ceremonies remaining separated from their place of origin. Especially given that these things were undoubtedly stolen and taken back to England as ‘curios’ and souvenirs.
Museums all around the world (particularly in Scotland and Wales!) are returning pieces to the country of origin. It seems the British Museum is the outlier, because of the focus on the Marbles. However, the Greek government have offered a ‘solution’ – that the Marbles be returned, and in exchange other pieces from Ancient Greece would be loaned for display. This seems like a sensible approach that could be applied in so many other cases but again, the Museum will not entertain any discussion.
“we don’t know that that would have happened”- it was happening at the time that the sculptures were brought out in the early 1800s. Greece was in the middle of becoming an ‘independent’ country under a 17-year-old German monarch, Otto. The locals were crushing the marble to make building materials for their own houses. The Napoleonic forces were also very busy taking a lot of patrimony away to the Louvre, some of which was lost at sea. I recommend William St Clair’s book. At least we still have them to argue over. Look at the current fuss about bringing the Bayeux Tapestry over to London. I have a good friend who is a keeper at the BM. I would be much happier leaving these decisions to curators and experts rather than the merry-go-round of politicians and political appointments who currently head up our institutions. Not being defensive, just we can’t rewrite history so we have to start from where we are. (They did return the Benin bronzes once they were sure they would be safe.)
Totally agree that these decisions should be left to the museums (the experts) rather than being political decisions. I don’t fully understand why the museums in Scotland and Wales are free to make decisions and yet the BM is not (I know there were laws passed to make it so but it seems odd to have different rules applying to different museums).
I do think there is an important distinction to be made between items that were acquired under agreements/ gifted (whatever those agreements looked like at the time) and pieces that were unquestionably stolen, specifically Aboriginal remains, ceremonial items, and artifacts. We can’t rewrite history but we can choose now to be on the right side of it, and returning Aboriginal remains and pieces of cultural heritage to country is vital (and the same applies for other indigenous cultures).
I’ve added the St Clair to my reading list!
I will ask my curator friend – he works with the cuneiform tablets – though I know he tries to keep out of the politics!
Ohhh, rhubarb!
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