Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and other U.S. and Greek officials participated in a ceremony in Manhattan on Dec. 15 to mark the return of 30 ancient works of art in Greece, collectively valued at $3.7 million.
Nineteen of these items are linked to longtime New York gallery owner Michael Ward, recently convicted of criminal facilitation of antiquities trafficking. Three were seized from dealer Robin Symes, who is in the process of returning his personal assets after almost two decades of exploitation. trafficking investigations. The return of the works to the Greek Consul General Konstantinos Konstantinou and the Secretary General of Culture Georgios Didaskalou crowns a busy year. repatriations for parquet.
The restitutions include a marble statue of the goddess Aphrodite, an ancient copy of the Aphrodite of Cnidus. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds a Roman copy in his collection, refers to the original as the “most famous Greek sculpture of a goddess” because of its revolutionary depiction of female nudity. The statue was recovered from a storage unit in Symes, where it is believed to have been hidden since at least 1999.
In Ward’s inventory, the prosecutor recovered a Corinthian helmet, a popular style worn by soldiers between the Archaic and Classical periods (ca. 700 BCE-350 BCE). The helmet was found to have been illegally trafficked from Greece and falsely sourced from Germany, before being shipped to Ward in New York.
By far the oldest object returned is a 4,000-year-old marble figurine from the Bronze Age Cycladic culture. The work, which represents the best-known type of Cycladic art, depicts a standing figure with his arms crossed. Many examples of the form remain intact today despite their age. The figurine recovered by the DA was seized from a private collector’s warehouse earlier this year.
At the ceremony, Bragg reiterated his commitment to combating looting and trafficking, saying his office “will continue to aggressively investigate those who use Manhattan as a base for trafficking in stolen antiquities.”
Konstantinou highlighted the importance of the recovered artworks, saying, “Thanks to the superb efforts of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, 30 incredibly preserved objects are finally being repatriated. Their monetary value is millions of dollars, but their real value goes far beyond that. They are priceless for the Greek people.
