In New York, the Met Museum cornered by seizures of antiquities
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A new search ordered in July by the American justice targeted twenty-two pieces kept by the prestigious institution. The growing list of looted goods kept within its walls raises questions.
The curators of Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), in New York, are beginning to be familiar with the Manhattan district inspectors. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) learned on Wednesday that the museum was the subject of two searches in mid-July which resulted in the seizure of 22 antiquities. With a total value estimated at more than $11 million, this lot of objects was said to have been looted long before entering the Met’s collections.
These last two searches concerned the sculpture of a Hindu mother goddess from the middle of the VIe century, as well as 21 objects kept in the Met’s Greco-Roman collections – including a marble head of Athena, several ceramic vases, precious tableware, statuettes and ancient helmets. According to American inspectors, this set of antiquities would have passed through several notorious networks of Italian and British art traffickers, including that of Robin Symes, before arriving in the galleries of the museum.
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Convicted in 2005, in London, for concealment, Robin Symes is known to have yielded in 1988, to the Getty Museumthe Venus of Morgantina, a remarkable classical sculpture returned to Italy in 2011. In 2000, he donated a terracotta statuette of a Greek goddess to the Met, seized that summer.
Eight pieces also acquired from the Swiss gallery of Gianfranco Becchina, an art dealer known for laundering thousands of Greek and Italian antiquities between the 1970s and 2000s. The Met had, among other things, bought him in 1979 a beautiful kylix – a very flared banquet drinking cup – dated around 470 BC. This delicate vase, adorned with a goddess making a libation, would be valued today at around $1.2 million.
Six searches in twelve months
This is not the first seizure of antiquities affecting the Met’s old collections. In May, five Egyptian objects had been confiscated from the museum by New York State inspectors as part of the same sprawling investigation that, in France, has earned the indictment of the former director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez. These pieces in question had been acquired between 2013 and 2015 by the American museum, a few years after their looting at the time from the chaos of the Egyptian revolution of 2011.
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The various objects seized are intended to be returned by American justice to their country of origin. “We have two repatriation ceremonies planned next week, first with Italy and then with Egypt”said on Saturday for CNN the Manhattan district attorney’s office in charge of the investigation. The two countries are expected to recover 74 items seized in recent months, including 27 held until recently by the Met. In 2019, the museum had already returned a sumptuous sarcophagus to Egypt, gold plated, bought in 2017 under nebulous circumstances.
Since 2017, the Metropolitan Museum has been the subject of nine search warrants, six of which were ordered in the last twelve months. An embarrassing accumulation for this venerable institution of international stature, which nevertheless collaborates, hand in hand, with American justice. “The methods of acquiring collections have evolved considerably over the past few decades”assured Friday at New York Times a spokesperson for the museum.
In the United States, however, the Met’s repeated failures are beginning to annoy. The museum teams are now being criticized for not having been more vigilant in the necessary verification of the provenance of a certain number of objects. Especially since some of the items seized had long been associated with known traffickers. “Establishments of excellence must carry out serious research into the history and constitution of their collections. This is part of the transparency expected from the museum.reproaches thus, for the New York Times, Derek Fincham, cultural property expert and professor at South Texas College of Law, Houston.
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Other specialists believe that it is high time for the Met to question itself, especially since the institution is not directly targeted in the investigation. “In what other context could you make headlines so often for having stolen property and not facing any consequences?”wonders for the ICIJ Tess Davis, director of the NGO Antiquities Coalition, specialized in the protection of cultural heritage.
On the side of the New York investigators, the colossal work of researching the looted property scattered within the American collections continues, in complete confidentiality. The investigation, we are assured, is not yet close to being completed. “The pace of seizures is accelerating. Expect it to go crescendo again”, told the ICIJ Matthew Bogdanos, assistant district attorney of Manhattan. The years will tell if it is a question of cleaning the stables of Augeas or of endlessly pushing back the rock of Sisyphus.
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