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150,000 square feet of exhibition space) and it feels decidedly foreign, and
perhaps a bit fortresslike in its surroundings. The lower floors, which will
display sculpture from the Archaic and Classical periods, are trapezoidal in
shape, and cut like a knife's edge into the fabric of the old neighborhood.
And the top gallery, the Parthenon space, feels almost arbitrarily aligned,
as if someone had simply given it a little twist in relation to the rest of
the structure.

Inside, however, it makes much more sense. The Parthenon Gallery's relation
to the Parthenon itself becomes clear. The sheer size and openness of the
galleries also give some hope that the maddening thing about touring Greece
-- the crowds, the human traffic jams, the throngs of tourists gibbering
about beauty just like you-- may be a bit more manageable. Tschumi, in his
theoretical writings, has always emphasized the dynamic, the importance of
bodies moving through architectural space. It's unlikely any visitor to the
new museum will be able to enter into solitary communion with anything in
it, but perhaps the openness of the gallery will accommodate the volumes of
people better than some of Greece's other archaeological museums.

Tschumi has also managed to design a building that feels both minimalist and
classical at the same time. Without echoing the Acropolis or succumbing to
ancient kitsch, Tschumi has built something that reveals its design and
structure and purpose as clearly as a Doric temple.

Part of its purpose, everyone here acknowledges with varying degrees of
diplomatic discretion, is to force the question of the Elgin marbles. The
size of the building and the pedigree of its architect emphasizes that
Athens wants its new museum to be thought of as a project similar in
seriousness and ambition to other "star architect" museum projects around
the world. The slickness and design efficiency of the building puts to rest
any remaining notion that Athens is unprepared to tend them. The veils over
the missing marbles add a poignancy to their absence. It will be curious,
should the British Museum ever relent and return the Elgin marbles, to see
if the building retains its somber power. For there is something serious,
sad and even aggressive about Tschumi's design, rhetorical qualities of a
long-standing grievance, that may seem strangely dissonant should Iris ever
get her body back.


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