"The returns, announced by the Manhattan District Attorney's office, follow multiple criminal investigations into international trafficking networks. According to the DA's office, traffickers exploited periods of instability and weak oversight to plunder sites such as Bubon, routing objects through Switzerland, the UK and the US. Once in New York, prosecutors say, dealers allegedly fabricated provenance records that allowed looted artefacts to be exhibited, published, and sold."
"Among the objects returned was a marble head of the Greek orator Demosthenes, which had been seized earlier this year from the Met by investigators from the DA's Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU). According to prosecutors, the sculpture, valued at around $800,000, was illegally removed from Turkey and entered the international art market through falsified provenance records before being donated to the Met in 2012."
US authorities returned dozens of antiquities to Turkey after a repatriation ceremony in New York on 8 December. Returned objects included two ancient sculptures — a marble head identified as Demosthenes and a headless Roman bronze emperor statue — works from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and dozens of terracotta reliefs from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prosecutors say traffickers plundered sites such as Bubon during periods of instability, routed objects through Switzerland, the UK and the US, and fabricated provenance records in New York to exhibit, publish and sell looted artefacts. The Met acknowledged new information establishing Turkish ownership and expanded its provenance research team.
Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]