New York’s Met Museum Returns Stolen Greek Bronze

Greece on Tuesday said it had recovered from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art a 2,600-year-old bronze artifact stolen from ancient Olympia in the 1930s.

The Greek culture ministry in a statement said the bronze griffin’s head, dated to 650-625 BC and was an “exquisite sample of ancient Greek metalwork.”

It had previously been “prominently” displayed at the Met’s ancient Greek and Roman art collection, the ministry said.

The 25.8-centimetre (10.1 inch) head was originally a decorative part of a tripod cauldron, which in antiquity were popular religious offerings to gods.

The culture ministry said it had established “beyond any doubt” that the head, willed to the Met in 1971 by financier and former museum vice-president Walter C. Baker, was stolen from Olympia, birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games.

It had been found in 1914 in a riverbed, near an ancient gymnasium used by athletes during the Games.

It is believed to have disappeared from a local museum in 1936 before it could be properly catalogued, the culture ministry said.

The head was sold that year to American art dealer Joseph Brummer, it said.

The Met on its website noted that over 600 bronze griffin heads from cauldrons are known today.

Most have been found at the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia or at that of Hera on Samos, it said, adding that the head formerly in its collection was “one of the finest” ever found.

The artifact was handed back Monday in a ceremony at the US museum by its director Max Hollein.

“We don’t want to have any object in our collections that came illegally,” the Austrian art historian, who has headed the Met since 2018, said in 2023.

The griffin head was not actually claimed by Athens. It was the Met itself that in 2018 undertook to examine its provenance, Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said.

Greece has an agreement in place with the Metropolitan Museum to acquire 161 Bronze Age antiquities formerly in the collection of US billionaire and philanthropist Leonard Stern.

The 2022 agreement involves the artifacts gradually returning to Greece over the next 25 years after display at the museum.

Athens has been trying for years to broker deals for the repatriation of antiquities without resorting to legal action.

Its chief goal remains the return of the Parthenon Marbles, held by the British Museum since the 19th century.

AFP