AIN’T NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING
What does it mean that when one performs an online search for “Parthenon,” the first links and images are of its replica in Nashville, Tennessee? This historically accurate building was built as temporary structure for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in 1897, fortified with more permanent finishes in 1925, and rechristened as a city art museum in 1931.
It makes perfect sense that someone would want to rebuild the Parthenon, as the original structure has suffered centuries of war damage and pillaging. And it makes perfect sense that Americans would want to rebuild the Parthenon on their own soil. It’s as a folly, spectacle, a circus act. It’s an act of possession, claiming a cultural history not available to us in the New World. And it’s an act of resistance, a refusal of time, loss and decay.