USA/FILE: Italian government signs deal over disputed art works with New York's Metropolitan Museum

Record ID: 583626

  • Title: USA/FILE: Italian government signs deal over disputed art works with New York's Metropolitan Museum
  • Date: 22nd February 2006
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF 2,500 YEAR-OLD GREEK VASE 'EUPHRONIOS KRATER' (7 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 9th March 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
  • Reuters ID: LVA4MPXF1A3VP3MSIF9C1CAAD7KU
  • Story Text: Italy signed a deal over disputed art works with New York's Metropolitan Museum on Tuesday (February 21), ending decades of controversy and paving the way for the return to Italy of antiquities Rome says were plundered.
    Under the agreement, the Met pledged to return several art works, including a 2,500-year-old Greek vase and a set of 15 Hellenistic silver pieces to Italy in exchange for long-term loans of equivalent beauty and importance.
    "The good faith with which both sides have entered into this agreement", said Philippe de Montebello, Metropolitan Museum Director in a news conference after the signing of the agreement, "will pave the road to new legal and ethical norms for the future. It will encourage, we believe, further reciprocal actions in every cultural and artistic sphere."
    Tomb raiders have looted antiquities in Italy for centuries, and Rome says some of the works have ended up on display in museums abroad, particularly in the United States.
    Authorities have undertaken an aggressive campaign in recent months to bring back antiquities stolen after 1939, when Italy passed a law stating that ancient artefacts from digs belong to the state. Art works excavated after that date can only leave the country on loan.
    "I'm convinced that this will also have a tremendous impact on our struggle against illegal excavations, smuggling, illegal commerce of cultural goods", said Italian Cultural Heritage Minister Rocco Buttiglione in the same news conference.
    Rome is particularly keen to recover the Euphronius krater, a Greek vase from the sixth century B.C. regarded as one of the most prized treasuries in the Met's collection, and the silver pieces from Sicily's Morgantina site.
    The former curator of another respected U.S. art institution, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, is on trial in Rome on charges of knowingly acquiring stolen artefacts.
    Both the Euphronios krater and the Morgantina silver pieces were sold to the Met by Paris-based art dealer Emanuel Robert Hecht, who is also a defendant in the trial.
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