Dozens of artifacts seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

[brooklynite]

Source: CNN

Dozens of ancient artifacts investigators believe were looted have been seized from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

The office seized 27 artifacts from the Met using three search warrants. They will be repatriated to their countries of origin, a spokesperson for District Attorney Alvin Bragg told CNN.

"We have two repatriation ceremonies next week, one with Italy and one with Egypt," the spokesperson told CNN. "Fifty-eight objects will go back to Italy, 21 from the Met. Sixteen to Egypt, six from the Met."

Bragg's office did not detail where the other artifacts were seized from, nor did it describe the artifacts seized.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/met-museum-artifacts-seized-new-york-looting/index.html

[Kittycatkat]

1. Can't click on CNN anymore. They are the enemy now.

Please link from another source.

[brooklynite]

2. No. News is news.

Add to which, there have been complaints about every major "corporate" news source. Not leaving a lot left.

[FarPoint]

3. I won't give them the click/read....

I want to contribute to the dislike message of their going to the dark side.

[spooky3]

4. Here's one from NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/02/arts/design/met-museum-looting.html?unlocked_article_code=-qagu5syir6TOsDkvytDOYcUrkv2b8BOuUWqvcPKPTvKRAA1euhQTvGKFSzOdPl56IKTWGBbHhb5x8xe8PZkkH8UyDo48TUHClnbGTdrFuPhtPGjpcOrTRvScRwRgiKbTgea02SKxxVdyyZnOCQKxO3KivaWONczvlEkeAcXkMcpUeBFvEOcSX-cL6IXQ7U8YYBL01dSEEwFrwghUDzeg-DpM6HvPs917El2860DqGf2b_vZvITW1vKYhE2z1HLq9w2jwTxqAa5-c3gAQr_fCU9FeR5cKvA7Gd6auALbPxZqoHvqqUD-XQcq2XoEsyMqW_RfZ0-MJThO0QnfjuJdIw&smid=share-url

[efhmc]

26. Thank you. That was very comprehensive.

[spooky3]

28. You're welcome.

[msfiddlestix]

30. Quote marks not necessary. Corporate News is Corporate News. Agencies Reporting their Stories

with Corporate Interest in play.

Always has been, always will be.

[Deuxcents]

5. I should think these artifacts were vetted by reputable experts..

How do they get looted?

[3Hotdogs]

6. Significant looting took place during the 19th century. This was the era of "heroic" explorers.

Take whatever you find. This was also an era where stuff was destroyed. Note the artillery practice on the Egyptian Sphinx.

I believe I recall seeing mummies at the Met in the '50's during jr. high field trip.


Harvard just returned Native Amer. remains to tribes.

[Polybius]

7. There's no statute of limitations?

Even if it was looted 200 years ago? It should be ours now.

[Deuxcents]

8. I disagree. If found, it should go back to the original owners' ..

Their museums, art galleries or universities.

[Polybius]

19. The rightful owners, their children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren are dead

What is the acceptable limit for stealing? 100 years? 500 years? 1,000? 10,000 BC? Nothing is infinite.

What if the paintings stolen at the Gardner Museum in 1990 (largest heist in history) are found in the year 2,190? Make them give it back? Then suppose it's found in 2,990? No change? This does open up good discussion.

[happy feet]

21. wow

the rightful owners are the nation from which they came

[Polybius]

22. So should we give up our land as well?

It was stolen 400 years ago.

[cab67]

20. in principle, yes.

In practice, not necessarily.

I'm a paleontologist and herpetologist, not an archaeologist, but the collections I work with deal with similar ethical and legal issues.

When it comes to human remains, I think they should always be repatriated - provided we know where they came from. But with artifacts, it can be more complicated.

For example - if we send them back, are they going to end up in a proper museum with the capability of conserving them? Will they remain accessible to the research community. Many developing countries have excellent museum facilities. I know because I've worked in them.

But not all. In some cases, there might be great risk that they'll end up being sold by a bureaucrat to a friend or relative. Or that they'll end up in a museum in the middle of a war zone. Or that they'll be put in a decrepit facility where the material will quickly deteriorate. I know because I've worked in some of the decrepit museums, too, finding mostly ruined specimens for which most important information (age, locality, collector, etc.) has been lost. I might as well have never gone there.

In these cases, repatriating artifacts isn't much better than simply throwing them away.

Repatriation takes a lot of care and consideration.

[msfiddlestix]

31. ✔️ Ty n/t

[poli-junkie]

10. No, but there may be a Statue of Limitations...

[sybylla]

18. LOL! ...n/t

[LeftInTX]

12. I don't think anyone will be charged. The items are simply returned

Unless the artifacts were taken recently.

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. I wouldn't think the District Attorney's office would be involved without a clear legal aspect

and the actual laws, as opposed to what now seems 'equitable', 'fair' or 'just', typically weren't defined back then. This seems connected to various dubious dealers and collectors in recent decades:

As ICIJ reported last year, the Met’s Asian collection includes Cambodian antiquities that passed through the hands of indicted art trafficker Douglas Latchford. The New York Times recently reported that the Cambodian government has enlisted the U.S. to press the Met for the return of dozens of Latchford-connected items.
...
In June of this year, authorities seized five additional ancient works from the museum’s Egyptian collection, following an international relics smuggling scandal that saw the former director of the Louvre Museum arrested in France facing conspiracy charges.

In February, the Manhattan district attorney obtained two warrants to seize two allegedly stolen pieces in different Met galleries – a Libyan statue of a veiled woman and an Egyptian bronze sculpture depicting a kneeling figure that experts believe depicts either a ruler or priest.
...
Bogdanos, who previously served in the U.S. military where he hunted looted artifacts for Iraqi museums, said the July confiscations involved statues that had moved through the networks of two high-profile convicted antiquities traffickers — Giacomo Medici and Gianfranco Becchina — and a third dealer named Pasquale Camera, who, according to court filings in New York, was known to be involved in “illegal trafficking of Italian objects” prior to his death in 1995.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/hidden-treasures/flurry-of-seizures-intensify-pressure-on-the-met-over-artifacts-linked-to-accused-traffickers/

[former9thward]

23. There was no artillery practice on the Sphinx.

That was a tale put out by anti-Napoleon forces. Drawings of the Sphinx from the early 1700s show the Sphinx as it exists today with no nose. That was long before Napoleon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza

[Wolf Frankula]

9. Dozens of items were stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

That will be said.

Wolf

[VGNonly]

11. Indiana Jones, tomb raider.

Seriously, the polar explorer Robert Peary managed to take from the Inuit, three meteorites. Taken to NY, then sold for $40,000. (about $1.2 million adjusted for inflation) The largest weighed an astonishing 68,000 pounds

[eppur_se_muova]

14. Those were a valuable source of iron for tools. Almost all Inuit iron was from meteorites. nt

[efhmc]

25. What happened to them?

[VGNonly]

27. Still on display

American Museum of Natural History NYC

[Crazyleftie]

13. Only 27?

so many museums around the world have "looted" artifacts. Will they also have items seized. I was thinking about the Oriental Museum in Chicago which is full of these artifacts.

Perhaps these are just recent acquisitions, which makes more sense.

[dalton99a]

15. Kick

A terra-cotta kylix, or drinking cup, attributed to the Villa Giulia Painter and dated circa 470 B.C., was seized. It had been purchased in 1979. Credit...The Metropolitan Museum of Art

[packman]

16. Make a copy - send the original back where it belongs

If the country wants to sell it back, it's their business-their choice.

[CTyankee]

24. Agreed! Theft is theft. And this is my absolute pet hate, as an art historian.

[Xolodno]

29. Going to make the obligatory joke here....

Why weren't the Pyramids of Egypt moved to Brittan?


They were too big for them to move.


That said, I've been to museums in Paris and the Vatican, lot of stuff in there that belongs to other cultures. With that said, I think things like this need to have compromise.

For example, it was discovered that Hearst Castle in California had Nazi looted art from a Jewish family. Three paintings in total. The family allowed them to keep one one of them and make copies of the other two as they realized, Hearst Castle had also become a piece of history.

[muriel_volestrangler]

32. New York returns $19m worth of stolen art to Italy

Giacomo Medici and Giovanni Franco Becchina are among the convicted robbers who used a network throughout Italy to steal pieces from unguarded sites, according to the DA's office.

It said that Medici's apparatus looted the marble head of Athena from a temple in central Italy, which was then installed at the Met in 1996.

Pasquale Camera was another regional crime boss, who organised the robberies as early as the 1960s from churches and museums, according to the office.

It said these objects were eventually imported to the US where they were sold to American billionaire Michael Steinhardt, who is now banned from buying antiquities after evidence found that items he owned had been looted and illegally smuggled.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-62819217