CLEVELAND, Ohio — It’s not easy to prove that a specific ancient work of art was looted and trafficked in recent decades and should be returned to its country of origin. This is because the bad guys involved in antiquities looting usually don’t talk about it and are often quite good at covering their tracks.
By the time illicitly excavated objects hit the art market, they are accompanied by a laundered provenance, or ownership history, which provides plausible cover for collectors and museums purchasing such works .
While it is debatable whether museums should purchase such objects, a counterargument is that the artworks might otherwise disappear into private hands and no longer be available for study and appreciation. As for the works themselves, they obviously cannot speak.
These are some of the uncomfortable realities that lie at the heart of a civil trial filed Thursday in federal court by the Cleveland Museum of Art, challenging an attempt by New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to seize a large headless ancient Roman bronze statue owned by the museum.
Since 1986, when the museum purchased the sculpture in good faith for $1.85 million from dealer Edward Merrin, the bronze has been a mainstay of its collection of ancient Roman art. The lawsuit seeks to have a judge declare the museum the rightful and legal owner of the artwork.
The statue, which measures 76 inches tall, was “seized on the spot” in August, which means it is still stored at the museum. Doug Cohen, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, said the work was “trafficked through New York, as part of a conspiracy centered in New York.”
Prove it
In essence, the museum’s lawsuit sends a simple message to the prosecutor’s office. Are you saying that the work was looted and that it constitutes stolen property? Prove it.
Turkish cultural officials have long maintained that the sculpture, previously described by the museum as depicting the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius, was unearthed in the 1960s in Bubon, an ancient Roman city in southwest Turkey.
But so far, neither the prosecutor’s office nor Turkish authorities have publicly provided evidence firmly linking the Cleveland sculpture to criminal activity.
Zeynep Boz, who heads Turkey’s anti-illicit trafficking department at the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, expressed her dismay in an email Friday to cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer that the Cleveland Museum is resisting efforts to have the sculpture returned to Turkey, given that other museums have returned Bubon-related items.
In April, for example, Bragg’s office announced the return to Turkey of 12 antiquities valued at $33 million. They included a $25 million sculpture purporting to depict Roman Emperor Septimius Severus that prosecutors seized in February from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The sculpture is believed to have been looted in the 1960s in Bubonartnet.com reported.
“I am so sad and disappointed that, despite all the evidence, the CMA is trying to keep a statue that was so clearly stolen,” Boz said in his email. “All other museums and institutions have returned their Bubon objects – more than 12 so far. Only the CMA insists on keeping their stolen statue.”
She added that “there is plenty of direct evidence that the (Cleveland) statue was stolen from Bubon. And this will be revealed very soon by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Until then, I’m sorry I can’t share all the evidence, but I must honor the process of the American criminal justice system. »
Cohen reiterated Friday that he would share any news regarding the Cleveland sculpture as soon as his office could. He did not comment on the lawsuit in an email. The museum also declined to comment on the litigation.
A rare setback
It’s unusual to see a museum sue law enforcement to block the seizure of an antique, Patty Gerstenblith, director of the Center for Art, Museum & Cultural Heritage Law at DePaul University in Chicago, said Thursday.
The museum’s lawsuit could raise complex legal questions about whether Cleveland is the proper venue, whether Ohio or New York laws apply and whether a criminal proceeding under New York law can decide ownership of the museum. ‘a museum in Ohio.
A more important question is whether the prosecutor’s office can prove that the Cleveland sculpture did indeed come from Turkey and that it left the country after a 1906 law that all antiquities found on Turkish soil are the property of the state. Turkey has said in the past that it has no export permit for the work.
The link with Turkey is a point that the museum now wants to contest. His lawsuit cites research by anonymous experts saying the work could depict ancient Roman emperor Lucius Verus or Sophocles, the ancient Greek playwright, and might not come from Turkey.
The lack of clarity as to the identity of the subject of the headless statue is essential because the Bubo site included a base on which the name Marcus Aurelius was inscribed. If the statue does not represent the Roman emperor, the link with Bubon, and perhaps with Turkey, becomes less credible.
“Without the head of the statue, in the current state of knowledge, any identification is practically impossible,” the museum’s lawsuit states, highlighting the doubt on the issue.
The lack of a clear connection to Marcus Aurelius would support the museum’s argument that the prosecutor is not conducting what it calls a typical criminal investigation.
Without saying so explicitly, the lawsuit suggests that the prosecutor’s modus operandi is to prove that an ancient work of art comes from a specific country, intimidate museums into bad press, and force them to return the works art in order to escape prosecution for detention. stolen property.
As the lawsuit states: “Repatriation typically occurs in elaborate ceremonies open to the press and attended by the New York District Attorney and his staff, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security, and diplomatic representatives from the country in question. News media in New York and elsewhere regularly cover the repatriation of “looted antiquities” by the District Attorney and his “antiquities trafficking unit.”
Bragg is known nationally as the prosecutor whose office indicted Donald Trump in April on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to secret payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels before the election 2016 Presidential Election. Head of Antiquities Trafficking Unit, Retired Marine Corps. Colonel Matthew Bogdanos also received a lot of press attention, much of it positive.
Progressive position
The Cleveland Museum of Art has worked hard over the past decade to position itself as progressive when it comes to returning looted antiquities to their countries of origin.
When presented with evidence of foul play, he returned ancient works of art to their country of origin. And in one high-profile case, he acted proactively, without outside pressure.
In 2015, the museum voluntarily returned a large, 1,000-year-old Khmer sculpture depicting the semi-divine Hindu monkey general Hanuman, after the museum collaborated with Cambodia on innovative research showing that the work had been looted during the country’s civil war in 1967. -75.
The restitution of Hanuman gave rise to extraordinary cultural exchanges which benefited the museum and its public, as well as the National Museum of Cambodia.
The lawsuit says the Cleveland museum has been persuaded in the past by the New York District Attorney’s office that certain objects should be returned to their countries of origin, but without specifying those cases.
The museum returned 14 objects to Italy in 2008, 13 of which were antiquities linked to a massive looting and art laundering operation discovered in 1995 during a police raid in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2017, the museum returned an ancient Roman marble head of Drusus Minor that it had purchased in 2012, after Italy produced evidence that the work had been stolen from a provincial museum outside Naples during WWII.
In both cases, neither the museum nor Italy directly shared evidence, so it is unclear what level of proof the museum required before deciding to return the objects.
The museum’s lawsuit comes amid a global climate change regarding antiques. The 1970 UNESCO Convention to Stop the Looting and Trafficking of Antiquities is less clear than it once was.
Museums have understood for more than a decade that it is risky and often inadvisable to purchase works of art that cannot be proven to have come from the ground before 1970.
More recently, countries of origin have become more aggressive in seeking the return of objects they believe were looted or seized in times of war or as part of colonial exercises of power.
Nevertheless, the Cleveland Museum makes a point of honor in its lawsuit to affirm that the bronze of the Philosopher was exhibited in Boston “in the late 1960s”, that is to say before the UNESCO Convention from 1970.
What is the proof?
Despite the museum’s claims that New York authorities have failed to make their case, a leading national expert on the Bubon site says the museum has also failed to present hard evidence that the work did not come from there.
“As far as I know, there is no real basis to dispute the assertions” of the New York prosecutor, Elizabeth Marlowe, chair of the art department and director of museum studies at Colgate University, said Thursday after reading a copy of the museum’s complaint. The museum “basically says, ‘you can’t prove it.’ We found people who question it.
The sources cited by the museum are anonymous and unpublished. The museum’s written complaint states that Arielle Kozloff, the former curator who oversaw the purchase of the large bronze sculpture in 1986, says she now believes “the Philosopher did not come from Bubon,” but the lawsuit does not include an affidavit.
Marlowe, who has studied the dozen large sculptures and other works associated with Bubo over the past five years, said “there is a lot of evidence” that the Cleveland sculpture came from Bubo. But she also says “it’s true, there is no irrefutable proof”. The evidence is circumstantial.
This explains the compelling nature of the museum’s lawsuit and the issues it raises. It could highlight the complex issues involved in trying to prove decades-old crimes.
If the lawsuit forces public disclosure of the facts through a judicial investigation, it could reveal what is really known about the museum’s mysterious statue. And that could determine whether he ends up in Turkey or returns to the museum’s Gallery 103.
