Photo courtesy of Hugo Schneider via Creative Commons.
Pictured above, the Metropolitan Museum of Art entrance in Manhattan, New York City. The museum is repatriating 27 works of art — valued at over $13 million — back to Rome, Greece and Egypt.
Lily Hoffman Strickler ’23
Staff Writer
The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art has found itself in the international spotlight following the seizure of 27 works of art from its collections by investigators. Altogether, the pieces taken — which are reported to have been looted from ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt — are valued at over $13 million.
The seizure was conducted by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office Antiquities Trafficking Unit. The group — which includes art experts, criminal investigators and prosecutors — tackles issues relating to the “elite” side of the New York art scene and the repatriation of looted artwork, according to The Atlantic. The methods by which The Met collects their art have been scrutinized by investigators over the past couple of decades, with many of their policies and procedures also under examination. The reclaimed art, which includes pieces such as the marble head of Greek goddess Athena and a bronze statuette depicting the Roman god Jupiter, will be returned to their places of origin in a repatriation ceremony, Smithsonian Magazine reported.
This repossession has prompted discussion surrounding problems in the art acquisition processes used by museums and the increasing amount of art discovered to have been sold or obtained under illegal and unethical pretenses. According to The Atlantic, the Antiquities Trafficking Unit has impounded over 3,600 pieces of art over the past decade, culminating at around $200 million worth of art obtained through organized trafficking.
When it comes to what the process of repatriation of art is like once it is in the possession of a museum — collector or auction house — Associate Curator of Visual and Material Culture and NAGPRA Coordinator at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum Aaron Miller is the one to ask. “Any institution that has taken federal funds is required to assess their collection, do an inventory and reach out to communities that are actually represented in the collection,” says Miller. Most of the decision-making power, he continued, resides on the side of the museum — not the government or state.
This is not the first time the Metropolitan Museum of Art has come under scrutiny for unethical art acquisition. In 2019, the museum was under review and returned a looted coffin from Egypt, in 2021 returned two Nigerian artifacts and in August 2022 returned looted art from Nepal. It is necessary that establishments conduct the necessary review and research before they come into possession of art — especially when lack of money and resources do not pose an issue. “The numbers are rapidly adding up,” Tess Davis, the executive director of the Antiquities Coalition said in an interview with The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists regarding the seizures at the Met. “In what other context could you make headlines so often for holding stolen property and not face any consequences?”
Miller does not believe this surge of investigations and seizures poses a threat to the museum industry. “It’s an interesting moment for institutions that have monumental works that they’re very much attached to, because these are often things that those source communities are also attached to getting back.”
The Antiquities Trafficking Unit has repeatedly investigated The Met closely regarding art trafficking, with the recent seizure creating widespread publicity when articles from The New York Times and NPR made their way to the Google trending page. Given recent movements for stolen art to be returned to its rightful owners — especially art from colonized countries — investigations like these ensure that pressure is building upon art collectors. This pressure requires collectors to rethink the fundamentals of buying art, and consider how it might be done so that not only the objects are protected, but the culture and history that created them.