The Cleveland Museum of Art filed a legal challenge Thursday seeking to block a seizure order from New York investigators who say one of the museum’s main statues, a headless bronze valued at $20 million, had been looted in Turkey in the 1960s.
In court papers filed in the U.S. District Court of Ohio, the museum said that, in reality, the evidence presented by investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office was not convincing. The museum disputed that the larger-than-life statue, which investigators say depicts the great Roman statesman Marcus Aurelius, even came from Turkey and suggested it was actually the torso of a philosopher and not an emperor.
Calling investigators’ evidence “conjecture,” the museum said in its filing: “In this case, the evidence presented by the defendant failed to convincingly prove that the Philosopher is in fact stolen property belonging to to the Republic of Turkey.
Investigators had already convinced a New York judge to authorize the seizure of the bronze which, with its flowing robes and stoic posture, has occupied pride of place in the Cleveland museum’s Greek and Roman galleries since its acquisition in 1986. Turkish investigators said they also had evidence that the Cleveland statue had been looted, but officials said the museum rejected their claims, saying Turkey had provided no hard evidence of theft.
Until recently, the museum’s website described the statue as “the emperor as a philosopher, probably Marcus Aurelius (reigned 161-180 AD)”, adding that the object came from “Turkey, Bubon (?) (in Lycia), Roman, late 2nd century. »
The museum also wrote in an accompanying description that the statue “probably depicts Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor known for his philhellenism and Stoic writings.” Aurelius wrote “Meditations,” a classic work on Stoic philosophy.
But earlier this year, the museum removed references from the website to Turkey and Aurelius and changed the text to read: “Draped male figure, c. 150 BCE-200 CE,” adding: “Roman or possibly Hellenistic Greek. » He also altered the language of the accompanying description to read “without a head, inscription or other attributes, the identity of the figure depicted remains unknown”.
The filing represents a rare challenge by an arts organization to a seizure order from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which in recent years has been responsible for the successful return of several thousand objects to countries whose cultural heritage had been the subject of pillage.
The museum took note of this record, acknowledging in its filing that the prosecutor’s office had had great success in such cases. But he added that in this case the evidence did not add up.
He cites a former Cleveland curator, Arielle P. Kozloff, who he said had questioned in the past whether the statue came from an ancient site, Bubo, in Turkey. “Based on subsequent research, she now believes that the Philosopher did not come from Bubo and that any previously established connection between Bubo and the Philosopher was mere conjecture,” the filing states.
He asked the court to declare the museum the rightful owner of the statue.
Investigators responded to the legal challenge with a statement saying, “The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office successfully recovered more than 4,600 illegally trafficked antiquities from numerous individuals and institutions. We are reviewing the museum’s filing in this matter and will respond in court documents.
The museum’s legal challenge was first reported by Cleveland.com.
New York and Turkish investigators believed the statue was part of a shrine built during Roman rule between AD 50 and 250, in what is now southwestern Turkey, to honor a succession of Roman emperors.
Turkish officials said they told the Cleveland museum that the statue, which measures 6 feet 4 inches without the head, was stolen in the 1960s during a wave of looting from the archaeological site. They have already recovered several other statues believed to come from the same location.
The statue was seized on site from the Cleveland Museum under an arrest warrant from New York investigators signed by a New York State Supreme Court judge on August 14.
In its filing Thursday, the museum said it purchased the statue in 1986 from the Edward H. Merrin Gallery for $1.85 million. The museum provided a bill of sale from the date of its purchase indicating that it was purchasing a “figure of a draped emperor (probably Marcus Aurelius), Roman, late 2nd century AD, in bronze.”
