The outcome was known since 2023, when an investigation by the office of the New York prosecutor concluded that a Greco-Roman bronze statue dating from 50 AD, exhibited since 1986 at the Cleveland Museum (Ohio) , had been pillaged in the Greco-Roman city Bubon a city of the former Lycia in Anatolia (current Turkey) in the 1960s. Depending from the head, this sculpture would represent the Roman emperor Marc Aurèle.
The Cleveland Museum of Art was therefore forced to return to Turkey the bronze sculpture of an estimated value of $ 20 million (20 million euros). “I am happy that the Cleveland Museum of Art recognizes that this statue belongs to the Turkish people”said New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg.
The New York prosecutor had seized bronze, claimed by Turkey since 2012, in the summer of 2023 as part of a “Curiminal investigation in progress on a contraband network involving antiques looted in Türkiye and exchanged via Manhattan”. The Cleveland Museum had then argued that it had legally acquired the work for 1.85 million dollars (1.7 million euros) from the New York gallery Edward H. Merrin.
However, the investigation confirmed that the Merrin Gallery had been involved in the looting of the sculpture. In the 1960s, residents of the village of Bubon in Türkiye would have found the vestiges and sold them to traffickers George Zakos and Robert E. Hecht, who would have ceded them to Merrin Gallery.
In the mid -1960s, a large number of Roman imperial statues appeared on the international art market through Robert E. Hecht. In recent years, the Manhattan prosecutor’s office has carried out several seizures in the context of looting in Turkey and notably ordered the return in December 2022 of five antiquities from the collection of Shelby White, administrator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York , including a bronze by Lucius Verus (also Emperor) from Bubon.
Pending the return of acephalous sculpture to Turkey, “The Museum and the Turkish authorities plan to temporarily exhibit the statue in Cleveland, as well as in other places of cultural cooperation between Turkey and the museum”said the museum.
