Italy gets back 266 antiquities from New York seizures and Houston museum
Italy is celebrating the return of 266 antiquities that were looted and sold to museums and private collectors in the United States
ROME — Italy celebrated the return Friday of 266 antiquities from the United States, including Etruscan vases and ancient Roman coins and mosaics worth tens of millions of euros (dollars) that were looted and sold to U.S. museums and private collectors.
The returned items include artifacts recently seized in New York from a storage unit belonging to British antiquities dealer Robin Symes, officials said. In addition, the haul that arrived in Rome included 65 objects from Houston’s Menil Collection.
The art unit of Italy’s Carabinieri paramilitary police said the owner of the Houston museum collection “spontaneously” gave back the items after investigators determined they had come from clandestine excavations of archaeological sites, according to a carabinieri statement. The museum did not immediately respond when asked for comment Friday.
Italy has been on a decades-long campaign to hunt down antiquities that were looted by “tombaroli,” or tomb raiders, and then sold to private collectors and museums in the U.S. and beyond. The looting operations involved art dealers who sold the items directly or via auctions.
Some of the items were handed over to Italian authorities Tuesday at the offices of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Bragg’s office said they included an Apulian krater, or vase, dating from 335 B.C. that was seized in July from a private collection in New York.
The vase had been photographed and included in the famous Polaroid “archive” of dealer Giacomo Medici, who passed it onto Symes, who then “laundered the piece through Sotheby’s London,” Bragg’s office alleged.
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