Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art
The investigation is being led by the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, according to The New York Times. Its target is international smuggling networks that have been supplying the global market with illegally exported archaeological artifacts for decades. Many of these items subsequently found their way into the collections of major Western museums. Investigators are now examining the provenance of artifacts acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art from dealers linked to the illegal trade in antiquities.
Among the most recent items confiscated are a marble head from the 1st century CE Roman period, a bronze statuette dating back about two thousand years, an ancient Egyptian gold diadem with ram heads, and other rare artifacts that, according to investigators, originate from Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and a number of other countries. The value of some of the items reaches $26 million.
The name of American art dealer Robert Hecht features prominently in the investigation. It was he who, in 1972, sold the famous Euphronia krater to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for more than $1 million. It later emerged that the vase had been illegally removed from Italy, and in 2008, the museum was forced to return it to its country of origin. Despite numerous allegations of illicit trade in antiquities, Hecht was never convicted.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art states that it actively cooperates with law enforcement agencies and voluntarily returns artifacts upon receiving evidence of their illegal origin. According to Luciana Simmons, head of the department of art provenance research, the museum has no interest in holding onto stolen cultural property and views cooperation with the prosecutor’s office as an important part of its work.
However, investigators have a different opinion. Matthew Bogdanos, head of the department for combating the illicit trafficking of antiquities, has publicly questioned the effectiveness of the museum’s internal audits. According to him, regular seizures indicate a systemic problem, and the main question today is: why is the prosecutor’s office forced to investigate the provenance of museum exhibits, rather than the museum itself?
The history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art shows that the era of unquestioning trust in major museum collections is coming to an end. As investigators trace the provenance of antiquities, even the world’s most prestigious museums are forced to return artifacts to their countries of origin, and the reputational consequences of such investigations are becoming no less significant than the financial ones.
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