New York Investigators Return 59 Looted Antiquities to Italy, Iraq, and Indonesia
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced on Wednesday that 59 looted antiquities from Italy, Iraq, and Indonesia have been returned to their countries of origin, including 45 objects seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Items returned to Italy included a terracotta wine-mixing and chilling vase attributed to the Troilos Painter that investigators said was smuggled out by Fritz Burki and sold via Christie’s London, and a Magna Graecia marble fish plate dating to around 400 B.C.E. that entered the Met through dealer Robert Hecht in 1984. Nine objects valued at nearly $300,000 were returned to Iraq, including Sumerian gypsum male and female worshipper figures from the Early Dynastic II period (circa 2750–2600 BCE). Two Dayak human skulls were returned to Indonesia, and the DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit led by Matthew Bogdanos—who received a Vilcek Foundation art history prize carrying a $100,000 purse that he declined—oversaw the effort.
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This story was covered in Restitution Shockwaves and AI’s Hollywood Heist