Why should the Parthenon Marbles stay in the British Museum? They’re an essential part of the story of art. “Here in these rooms is the fundamental vocabulary of Western sculpture, the beginnings of Giovanni Pisano, Donatello and Michelangelo, the visual and practical storehouse of the Italian Renaissance. To destroy such a treasury of beautiful solutions by removing its heart would to my mind represent as much an act of vandalism as any ever perpetrated upon art.”