Photo: Baltimore Painter, Purchase, Mrs. James J. Rorimer Gift, 1969 via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)
While the phrases “cultural restitution” and “repatriation” may be considered by some to be no more than hot buzzwords, last month, New York authorities proved that they take the return of cultural artifacts seriously. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced two separate occasions of ancient artifact repatriations in February, while the Metropolitan Museum of Art also announced a case for return after conducting internal provenance research on an object in their collection.
The two collections recovered by the District Attorney’s office will be returned to Greece and Italy, respectively. The Greek artifacts, which total 11 objects, have an estimated value of $1 million. Items in this collection include a fourth-century BCE Dionysian kantharos, a statuette of the mythical heroine Atalanta, a 1300-1200 BCE votive figurine, and a fourth- to third-century BCE marble funerary relief, among others.
The artifacts returning to Italy have a total estimated value of $1.2 million; they were recovered from a combination of concurrent investigations and have connections to multiple known antiques smugglers. Some of the more significant items among these recovered artifacts are a fourth-century BCE-era bronze patera, an Apulian volute krater from 320-310 BCE, and a terracotta kylix band-cup dated to the mid-sixth century BCE.
A press release from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office offers further insight into how these objects wound up in New York and who was involved. The bronze patera, a shallow bowl used by the Romans for pouring libations, was smuggled out of Italy by convicted antiquities trafficker Gianfranco Becchina. From there, it moved to the hands of Mathias Komor, an antiquities dealer, who sold the bowl to its current owner before being seized by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU) of the District Attorney’s office.
The Apulian volute krater, traditionally used for mixing wine and water, was originally found among Greek ruins in Southern Italy and was believed to have been trafficked out of Italy by Edoardo Almagià. He sold the artifact to a Manhattan gallery at some point before 1987, and the ATU seized it from a private collection earlier this year. Almagià has been charged for his connections to the antiquities trafficking investigations.
The terracotta kylix, a drinking cup, “was found and illegally excavated from the Etruscan archaeological site of Vulci in the 1960s before it was smuggled out of Italy by the New York and Paris-based dealer Robert Hecht.” The press release goes on to say that the kylix “was eventually acquired by the Met in 2017 where it remained until it was seized by the ATU.”
According to an announcement made on February 24, the Met also partook in an act of repatriation with an object from their own collection after internal provenance research. A restitution ceremony was held for the return of a seventh-century bronze head, which was originally discovered in Olympia in 1914.
Researchers believe the artifact was removed from the Archaeological Museum of Olympia sometime in the 1930s, before it made its way to the United States and was donated to the museum by a former trustee. While the journey toward restitution and repatriation is far from over, the return of these artifacts back to Greece and Italy is a step in the right direction.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced last month that two collections of trafficked antiquities will be returned to their respective countries of origin, Greece and Italy.
Each collection has an estimated value of $1-1.2 million, making the combined total of the recovery $2.2 million.
The artifacts were recovered via multiple concurrent investigations. Some of the most notable objects were linked to known antiquities traffickers and smugglers.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art also announced the return of a seventh-century bronze from their collection to Greece after an internal review of the object’s provenance.
Sources: Repatriation Ceremony for 11 Antiquities Returning to Greece; Relentless Prosecutor Bogdanos Honored; The Met Returns Stolen Seventh-Century B.C.E. Bronze Griffin Head to Greece
Related Articles:
Massachusetts Museum Returns 150 Sacred Items to the Lakota Sioux Peoples
Pope Francis to Return 2,500-Year-Old Parthenon Sculptures Back to Greece
Stolen Van Gogh Painting Is Returned to Museums in the Netherlands After Three Years
17,000 Looted Ancient Artifacts Return to Iraq in Massive Repatriation