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A section of the Parthenon marble sculptures brought to the British Museum, London, in the early 19th century. Ian Jenkins oversaw them and dealt with public discussion they gave rise to.
A section of the Parthenon marble sculptures brought to the British Museum, London, in the early 19th century. Ian Jenkins oversaw them and dealt with public discussion they gave rise to. Photograph: Matthew Fearn/PA
A section of the Parthenon marble sculptures brought to the British Museum, London, in the early 19th century. Ian Jenkins oversaw them and dealt with public discussion they gave rise to. Photograph: Matthew Fearn/PA

Ian Jenkins obituary

This article is more than 3 years old
Archaeologist who oversaw the Parthenon marbles and other sculpture from ancient Greece at the British Museum

For more than four decades the work of the classical archaeologist Ian Jenkins, who has died aged 67 after suffering from Parkinson’s disease, focused on ancient Greek sculpture at the British Museum in London. Central to this collection are the celebrated marble sculptures from the Parthenon, the monument to the goddess Athena, on the Acropolis, the citadel above Athens.

Ian always insisted that the sculptures should, like poetry or music, be thought of as superb pieces of human artistic endeavour, and regretted the role they had come to play in what today is termed contested history. He devoted many hours of research to them, reconstructing their original arrangement. This was harder than might be thought, as only about half survive, and he was quietly pleased at the thought that some of his ideas had been incorporated into the displays at the new Acropolis Museum in Athens.

The Parthenon marbles as displayed in the British Museum. Photograph: Neil Hall/EPA

His work saw many exciting new discoveries, such as the surviving presence of traces of ancient paint. Greek sculpture was not gleaming white, as was often, and still sometimes is, supposed, but covered with a kaleidoscope of colour.

He could not avoid the politics of the public discussion about “the Elgin marbles”. In 1999 he bravely convened an international conference to examine the controversial cleaning of the sculptures, detailed in Cleaning and Controversy: The Parthenon Sculptures 1811-1939 (2001).

The episode had taken place in the 1930s, and the museum was being accused of covering up the story. Ian was keen to refute that accusation, pointing out that it had been discussed in the newspapers of the day.

Ian Jenkins in the garden at the British School at Athens. Photograph: British School at Athens

He was less sanguine about what had been done. “The British Museum is not infallible, it is not the pope,” he was quoted as saying by the Guardian. “Its history has been a series of good intentions marred by the occasional cock-up, and the 1930s cleaning was such a cock-up.” Ian did not enjoy the event, and regretted the way it distracted him from his twin passions of understanding Greek culture and communicating it to his many audiences.

Born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, Ian was the son of Ivor Jenkins, a civil servant, and his wife, Lena (nee Swatton). After attending Chippenham school (1964-70) he undertook a variety of short-term jobs and went to Bristol University (1974-77), where he studied Greek with archaeology and history.

A serious interest in stone arose subsequently from a period in Bath as a trainee stonemason. In 1978 he joined the British Museum, and devoted the rest of his life to his work there.

As a BM colleague, I came to appreciate his achievements away from the publicity that went with his Parthenon work. Ian had a flair for exhibitions and galleries. Unlike books, museum displays are not “authored”, so few of the millions of visitors to the BM realise that they are enjoying his creative vision when they go to the galleries of Greek and Roman Life – a busy staple for school visits – the Hellenistic World or the Enlightenment. Many temporary exhibitions were also Ian’s work, ranging widely from the origins of the museum’s collections, as with Vases and Volcanoes – Sir William Hamilton and his Collection (1996), to Greek art, as with Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art (2015), and its relationship to modern art, as with Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece (2018).

Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece exhibition, 2018, curated by Ian Jenkins. Conservators from the British Museum are working on the Parthenon sculpture that evokes two goddesses (the two on the right in the photo at the top of this article) and The Kiss by Auguste Rodin, 1882. Photograph: James Gourley/Rex/Shutterstock

He insisted that the museum should take its own history seriously. The Hamilton exhibition demonstrated that concern: the thesis for his University of London PhD (1990) on the topic gave rise two years later to a book, Archaeologists and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the British Museum 1800‑1939.

The BM has never been good at recognising the impact of its own visual history on its audiences, and Ian showed brilliantly how the way the sculpture displays had changed over the years was a barometer of changes in aesthetic and archaeological sensibilities. For example, the Parthenon sculptures, shown for many years as supreme examples of art per se, were previously displayed in their architectural context. Greek Architecture and Its Sculpture (2006) reflected his concern that many Greek sculptures should be understood primarily as the decoration of buildings, and not as free-standing pieces to be admired in an art gallery. It was for this reason, also, that he undertook several years of excavation at the ancient site of Cnidos, in south-west Turkey. The colossal lion that first greets visitors to the BM’s Great Court came from there in the 19th century, and with Turkish colleagues Ian directed a research project to understand the site better.

Ian Jenkins, right, and colleagues on an excavation at Cnidos, in south-west Turkey. Photograph: Trustees of the British Museum

He was passionate about communicating to all his audiences, from the most academic, through books and articles to the interested adult, through public talks, and children, as through his book Explore the Parthenon: An Ancient Greek Temple and Its Sculptures (2009). He wanted the sculptures to be accessible to all, and the two small rooms leading to the Parthenon display, which opened in 1998, not only inform the visitor about the context and history of the monument, but have a series of tactile displays for blind people and those with visual impairments. They were accompanied by his book Second Sight of the Parthenon Frieze (1998), and he was working on a new touch tour at the time of his death.

Ian was modest, self-deprecating and popular, not least with colleagues in Greece. He gave selflessly to others of his time and energy, despite for almost two decades having Parkinson’s disease, which affected his walking and standing. As the illness progressed, so he became a more and more spellbinding speaker, as if to compensate. In 2010 he was appointed OBE. He married Frances Dunkels in 2005, and she survives him.

Ian Dennis Jenkins, classical scholar and archaeologist, born 18 February 1953; died 28 November 2020

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