In 2023, Anderson Cooper reported that a large number of antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection had come to the world-class museum by way of theft. Ancient art had been looted from Cambodian temples fifty years ago and the Cambodian Government wanted them back. But as Cooper discovered, returning the stolen goods was no simple matter – a lesson that another 60 Minutes correspondent had learned two decades prior. In 2002, Ed Bradley traveled to Greece and England to cover a dispute that is hundreds of years old – whether the British Museum should return a collection of marble statues removed from the Parthenon back to Athens. This episode of 60 Minutes: A Second Look will examine why, more than 20 years later, that dispute remains deadlocked, and whether efforts like those by the Cambodian activists that Cooper profiled are changing the way we think about museums and the ownership of ancient art. If you enjoyed this episode of "60 Minutes: A Second Look", find and follow the show on your favorite podcast app. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Wondery plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad free right now.
Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app today.
This is ticket only.
Entrance tricks tickets.
We're about to enter the great Parthenon Galleries.
Wow.
There's a plus to coming here early.
I feel like almost you have to whisper.
Yeah, it almost feels like a kind of a spirit, spiritual space, doesn't it?
This past summer, we were fortunate enough to get a tour of the British Museum first thing in the morning.
It was a chance to beat the crowds to see some of the most significant artifacts of the ancient world.
It's quite a feat of sculpting and it's unequaled in any of the ancient sculpture that we still have with us today.
And those ancient sculptures happen to be at the center of a very modern debate.
Alexander Herman took us around.
He's the author of a book about the Parthenon marbles, perhaps better known as the Elgin Marbles.
So these are the roughly 90 large pieces of sculpted marble that were taken from the Acropolis in Athens by men working for the British ambassador, Lord Elgin in the first decade of the 19th century.
But what once was a common practice of finders keepers has become one of the longest custody disputes in cultural history.
The trouble is, those marbles are now in the British Museum in London, and the Greeks want them back.
That was 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley.
In 2002, Greece was preparing to host the Olympics and was trying to reclaim its national treasures ahead of them.