The Cleveland Museum of Art is getting a bit smaller, at least in terms of its collection. It’s giving up one of its showcase items that was apparently stolen or otherwise illegitimately acquired at some point in its chain of provenance. Actually, this is not something that’s just happening here and there. It’s part of a broader movement among museums to consider more thoughtfully how they accumulated their treasures and assess whether those treasures really are where they ought to be.
We’ve talked before about some high-profile examples of this. I’d say up until now the two most famous cases involve a collection of ancient Greek sculptures at the British Museum known as the Elgin Marbles; and a vast number of artworks from Africa known as the Benin Bronzes that are literally all over the world.
About ten years ago the Turkish government began a campaign to retrieve works of art that it claimed had been looted from its territory over the centuries. Some museums around the world responded that the pressure amounted to “cultural blackmail.” One official at a Berlin museum called the efforts “polemics and nasty politics” and said Turkish museums themselves are full of looted treasures.
In the case of the Cleveland Museum, the piece in question is a six-foot bronze statue from around the year 200 AD, believed to depict Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius although its head is missing. It’s been in the museum’s collection since 1986. It’s suspected that the piece came from a shrine in the architectural site of Bubon, in southwestern Turkey. Back in March, the Metropolitan Museum in New York agreed to send 3 similar works back to Turkey, including another life-size bronze sculpture of another Roman Emperor that was thought to have been looted from the same place. The Institute for Greek and Roman Antiquity says there’s been no serious archaeological investigation of Bubon “or its territory, both of which have been the target of systematic looting, predominantly in the 1960s.” The Cleveland Museum removed the piece from display over the summer, and last month ago a New York judge ordered it brought to New York to await a hearing.
The broader mood among museums seems to be slowly bending in a moral direction. “...ethical standards applicable to museums are much changed since the 1960s,” says Claire Whitner, Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts. On September 1, the Worcester Museum announced it was also transferring a bronze bust—likely from the same place in Turkey—to the Manhattan DA’s office. New York City is involved in all this by the way because looted objects were believed to have been trafficked through dealers in Manhattan. Stay tuned to see if the Emperor finds his way home.
