The new Acropolis Museum in Greece, which opened on Saturday, will proudly show plaster copies of the infamous Elgin Marbles—a collection of sculptures and friezes “extracted” from the Parthenon which have been in England since the 1800s.

Flying in the face of traditional museum custom, in which copies would be treated to look more like the originals, Prof Dimitrios Pandermalis, the archaeologist in charge of the museum, is determined to use the display to demonstrate that the nation that created the sculptures does not have ownership of them.

The story of the Elgin Marbles dates back to the turn of the 19th century, when Lord Elgin, Thomas Bruce, the British Ambassador to Greece, took an interest in works in the damaged Parthenon. Claiming permission from the ruling Ottoman Empire which has never been reliably verified, the 7th Earl of Elgin removed a large percentage of the surviving art from the Parthenon, a move that even then was roundly denounced as archeological vandalism.

The Marbles were bought by the British Government from Lord Elgin in 1816 for half of what he paid to remove them from Greece. At the core of Greek anger about the Elgin Marbles is not only their disputed ownership by England, but the manner and circumstances in which they were removed. The terms cited by Lord Elgin as authorisation for their removal are shaky at best.

The existing remnants of the Ottoman authorisation document, a firman, suggest that the authorities of the day offered Elgin permission to make casts, measure the works and remove any rubble that he found. Elgin carted away 17 statuary figures, 15 metope panels and half of the Parthenon frieze. Some of these artefacts were damaged by ill-advised attempts at cleaning in the mid-19th century.

For almost 30 years, the Government of Greece has been lobbying the British Government for the return of the collection, and the opening of the Acropolis Museum, meant to be the ark of Greek culture, has proven to be a flashpoint for the long-running discussion. The issues around the restitution of artwork to the countries of their origin remains a contentious and hotly-contested one, both for the current owners and the nations of their creation.

As nations mature, there is an understandable desire to reclaim the relics of their past, surprising percentages of which have been claimed by former empires and looted by occupiers. In 2006, the British Museum agreed to repatriate two bundles of aboriginal human remains to the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre of Australia, after 160 years and 20 years of discussions on the matter. The remains are the oldest known to exist in the modern world.

The obelisk of Axum, a 2,000-year-old artefact of Ethiopia, looted by Mussolini in the 1930s, was returned to its home by Italy in 2003. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston chose to be proactive in dealing with art and artifacts it believed to have been acquired under shady circumstances and contacted Italian authorities to review and verify some of the works in its possession that were held to be suspicious as a result of a high-profile art theft case.

Museums around the world have no problem restoring the thousands of paintings, sculptures, books, and artefacts confiscated from Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust to their legal and rightful owners. Likewise, we would expect the British Museum to do the right thing, or risk blemishing its reputation by approving the theft of artefacts which have universal value and appeal, and which would be most appropriately housed in the Acropolis Museum.

Changing times demand refreshed approaches to art acquisitions which may have been acceptable in less enlightened times. As nations embrace and build their national identities, museums around the world may need to begin to re-engineer their role as one of preservation and verification until ancient works of history, art and craft can be safely returned to the nations that created them.