The Met has millions in stolen art. It’s not waiting to be asked to return it.
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in late February, an increasingly familiar scene played out: A museum was restituting a work of art, giving back something from its collection to the place where it originated—in this case, Greece. The announcement, however, was more celebratory than sheepish.
It was being done with the fanfare more often associated with acquiring a great object rather than returning one. That’s because, in this case, the Met itself launched the inquiry into the sculpture’s origin. The work in question was a small bronze sculpture of the head of a griffin, a mythological creature, made in the 7th century B.C.
It had been on display at the Mets since 1972. Max Hollein, the Met’s director and CEO, spoke to the assembled crowd. The piece, he said, “could not have legitimately left" Greece.
Over the last few years, museums have had to respond to inquiries—sometimes as part of legal claims that can come from countries or former owners, or are initiated by U.S. law enforcement—about works that were stolen, illegally excavated, exported or traded improperly. But with the griffin head, the Met didn’t wait to be asked.
Greek authorities weren’t attempting to reclaim it. Instead, in a turn that shows how the process of repatriation and restitution has changed, the Met took the initiative to investigate how the griffin head got into its collection. The museum found it had disappeared from the Archaeological Museum of Olympia in the 1930s.
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