More art looted from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is on its way back, with two recent repatriation ceremonies to Greece and Turkey, and the planned return of 15 antiquities smuggled by disgraced dealer Subhash Kapoor, currently in prison in India for his crimes.
Last month, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. announced the return of 12 antiquities worth a collective $33 million to Turkey, including three from the Met. The most important is a headless bronze statue, believed to represent Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, which the prosecutor’s office seized from the museum in February.
The $25 million sculpture dates to 225 CE and is believed to have been looted in the 1960s during a splinter at Bubo, an archaeological site in southwestern Turkey. It had been on loan from a collection in Switzerland since 2011.
“The museum is committed to the responsible acquisition of archaeological art and applies rigorous provenance standards to both new acquisitions and long-standing works in its collection,” the Met said in a statement. statement. “The museum actively examines the history of antiquities from suspicious dealers.”
A looted bronze of Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, seen here on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, has been returned to Turkey. Photo courtesy of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The Met was also forced to repatriate $1.25 million bronze head from his collection representing the Emperor Caracalla, eldest son of Severus. It is dated between 211 and 217 CE, and is also believed to have been illegally taken from Bubo.
“These exhibits, dating as early as 5,600 BCE, are of immense cultural and historical significance,” said Ivan J. Arvelo, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in New York. statement.
Bronze head of Roman Emperor Caracalla (c. AD 211-217). Photo courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
The third Turkish antiquity from the Met included in the restitution is a 290 CE marble sculpture of a head, thought to come from the heavily looted archaeological site of Perge. A private collector had lent the work, worth $250,000, to the museum.
Turkey has required the discovery of antiquities to be reported to the government since 1906, but looting was common among local farmers seeking a secondary source of income in the 1960s.
“The looting at the time was a business venture for the villagers,” said assistant district attorney Matthew Bogdanos, head of the district attorney’s antiquities trafficking unit. New York Times.
This Perge theater head looted and loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has been returned to Turkey. Photo courtesy of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office
The prosecutor’s office has confiscated a total of 17 artifacts from the Met this year so far. The San Antonio Museum of Art, Princeton University Museum of Art and Fordham University Museum of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Art were also raided.
The Greek restitution ceremony also took place last month and included 29 artifacts collectively valued at over $20 million. Among them was one of only three known Eid Mar coins commemorating the murder of Julius Caesar, minted in 42 BCE
Greek and Turkish artifacts included works of art looted from among the 89 stolen antiquities worth $69 million seized from Shelby White’s collection – nine are now returning to Turkey. The two returning to Greece are a Neolithic family group (5000-3500 BCE) worth $3 million that she lent to the Met in 2000, and a bronze chalice krater from 350 BCE from a plundered grave.
A looted Neolithic family group (5000–3500 BCE) from Shelby White’s collection that had been loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was returned to Greece. Photo courtesy of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Earlier in March, the Indian Express published a list of 18 sculptures and 59 paintings from the Met collection related to Kapoor and his former New York gallery, Art of the Past. The Met had pledged to investigate the origins of these artifacts in 2019, after a New York criminal court charged Kapoor with 86 counts.
The Met returns sculptures in terracotta, copper and stone that were made between the 1st century BCE and the 11th century CE. Chandraketugarh jar.
Examination of the Met collection has grown in recent years, with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists releasing a report last month identifying more than 1,000 artifacts held by the museum with links to people who have been charged or convicted of antiquities-related crimes.
Eid Mar coin (42 BCE). Photo courtesy of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Several of the newly repatriated antiques from the Met once belonged to one of the men named in the report, the dealer Robert Hecht. Italy twice accused him of smuggling antiquities, even going so far as to issue an arrest warrant, but the Met continued to buy from him. Until his death in 2012, Hecht continued to deny any wrongdoing.
Since the DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit was established in 2017, it has seized nearly 4,500 antiquities worth more than $160 million that were stolen from 28 countries. More than half have since been repatriated.
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