A New York court ruled yesterday, March 8, that Turkey was not entitled to a 6,000-year-old marble sculpture which the nation says was looted because it waited too long for the retrieve. In 2017, billionaire Michael Steinhardt gave the “Guennol Stargazer” idol to Christie’s, where it sold for $12.7 million.
“Turkey stood idly by despite signals from its own Culture Ministry that the Stargazer was in New York,” the paper read. decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second District of New York. “The fact that Turkey did not submit its request (or even investigate) before 2017 was unreasonable.” The verdict follows a previous case decided against Turkey in 2021.
The Stargazer marble figurine was created around 3000 to 2200 BCE in Kulaksizlar, Anatolia, modern Turkey. In 1961, art dealer JJ Klejman sold the idol to a pair of art collectors, Alastair and Edith Martin, in New York. Where, when and how Kejman found the object is unknown.
The Martins loaned the object to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1968 until 1993, when they sold it to the Merrin Gallery. Michael Steinhardt purchased the Stargazer from the gallery the same year. The idol again found her place in the Met from 1999 to 2007.
Ten years later, Steinhardt sold the piece through Christie’s, although the buyer never took possession of it. A few weeks later, Turkey takes legal action to obtain the repatriation of the idol.
Christie’s declined to comment. Steinhardt’s attorney, Andrew J. Levander, said Hyperallergic the recent court ruling asserted that his client “was an ordinary buyer of antiquities without the same duty to investigate provenance as art dealers or museums”.
Steinhardt, however, is not quite an “ordinary antiques buyer”. The hedge fund billionaire’s collection was estimated at more than $200 million and has been the subject of several seizures by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Former District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. accused Steinhardt in 2021 of having a “rapacious appetite for looted artifacts” and a “decades-long disregard for the rights of peoples to their own sacred treasures”.
At trial 2021 Turkey v Christie’s, Inc.Turkey presented evidence “to prove Steinhardt’s flippant attitude to legal provenance and foreign heritage laws” and claimed the billionaire would have purchased the item whether it was stolen or not. The court dismissed external evidence as irrelevant and concluded that Steinhardt’s alleged failure to contact Turkey, the gallery or the first New York buyers, the Martins, did not leave the court with “firm belief that a mistake had been made”.
The court cited evidence that the Turkish Ministry of Culture was aware of the Stargazer’s location in New York and therefore “should have been aware of its potential claim in the 1990s”. The verdict depends on the loose doctrinewhich deprives defendants of their rights to sue if they delay in asserting those rights.
“And having compared Steinhardt’s investigation into the provenance of the Stargazer with Turkey’s inaction for more than twenty-five years, we do not conclude that the District Court abused its discretion in balancing respective diligence of the parties,” the court said.
Turkish lawyer Lawrence Kaye said Hyperallergic he is disappointed with the decision and thinks it was a mistake. “We think the cowards decision is wrong,” Kaye said. The lawyer said the verdict has “a negative impact on all countries of origin to recover their undiscovered antiquities that have been stolen”.
“We are reviewing our options for next steps,” Kaye continued, adding that he “will aggressively pursue cultural objects that have been stolen.”
