{"id":1998550,"date":"2023-08-12T04:58:03","date_gmt":"2023-08-12T08:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/italy-gets-back-266-antiquities-from-new-york-seizures-after-collector-approaches-houston-museum\/"},"modified":"2023-08-12T05:00:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-12T09:00:59","slug":"italy-gets-back-266-antiquities-from-new-york-seizures-after-collector-approaches-houston-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/italy-gets-back-266-antiquities-from-new-york-seizures-after-collector-approaches-houston-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy recovers 266 antiquities from New York seizures with help from Houston Museum."},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fitaly-gets-back-266-antiquities-from-new-york-seizures-after-collector-approaches-houston-museum%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1998550&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>Italy Celebrates the Return of Stolen Antiquities<\/h2>\n<p>ROME\u2014Italy \u200ccelebrated\u2062 the return Friday of 266 antiquities from the United States, including Etruscan vases and ancient Roman coins and mosaics worth tens of millions of euros\u2064 (dollars), that were looted and\u2062 sold to U.S. museums\u200d and private collectors.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/italy-gets-back-266-antiquities-from-new-york-seizures-after-collector-approaches-houston-museum\/\" title=\"Italy recovers 266 antiquities from New York seizures with help from Houston Museum.\">returned\u200c items \u2063include artifacts recently seized<\/a> in New York from a storage unit belonging to British antiquities\u200c dealer Robin Symes, officials said. In addition, the haul that arrived in Rome\u2064 included 65\u200d objects that had been \u2063offered by a collector to Houston\u2019s Menil Collection, but were declined.<\/p>\n<p>The art unit of Italy\u2019s Carabinieri paramilitary police said\u2064 the owner of\u2062 the collection \u201cspontaneously\u201d \u200dgave back the \u2064items after investigators determined they had come from clandestine excavations of archaeological sites, according to \u200da \u2062carabinieri statement.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>Related Stories<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>\n      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/world\/audit-finds-800-items-missing-from-canadian-history-museum-no-plan-to-deal-with-it-5457741\">Audit Finds 800 Items\u2063 Missing From Canadian History Museum, No Plan to Deal With It<\/a><br \/>\n      <br \/>\n      <strong>8\/10\/2023<\/strong>\n    <\/li>\n<li>\n      <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/bright\/harley-davidson-museum-celebration-of-an-american-icon-5361107\">Harley-Davidson Museum: Celebration of \u2063an American Icon<\/a><br \/>\n      <br \/>\n      <strong>7\/2\/2023<\/strong>\n    <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>While the \u2063carabinieri said the \u2064works had been part of the Menil Collection,\u200d the museum said they never were. The museum said a\u2063 collector approached\u200c the museum in 2022 about making a\u200b gift\u2064 of the artifacts, but the museum curator directed the collector to the Italian culture minister, \u201cwho alerted the museum that Italy was claiming the objects.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Menil Collection declined these \u2063works from the collector and they have never been part of the museum&#8217;s\u2063 collection,&#8221; spokesperson Tommy \u2062Napier said in a statement late Friday to The Associated Press.<\/p>\n<p>Italy has been on\u200d a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/republicans-call-on-biden-to-walk-racial-equity-talk-by-boycotting-beijing-olympics\/\" title=\"Republicans Call On Biden To Walk Racial Equity Talk By Boycotting Beijing Olympics\">decades-long campaign<\/a> to hunt down \u2063antiquities that were looted by \u201ctombaroli,\u201d or\u200c tomb raiders, and then\u200d sold to\u2062 private collectors and museums in the United States and beyond. The looting operations involved art dealers who \u200csold the items\u2063 directly or via auctions.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the items were\u200c handed\u200b over to Italian authorities Tuesday at the offices of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg. Bragg\u2019s \u200coffice said they \u2064included an Apulian krater, or vase, dating from 335 B.C. that was seized in July\u200c from\u200c a private collection in New York.<\/p>\n<p>The \u200bvase had been \u2062photographed and included in\u2062 the\u2063 famous Polaroid \u201carchive\u201d of dealer Giacomo Medici, who \u2063passed it onto Symes, who then \u201claundered the piece through Sotheby\u2019s London,\u201d Mr. Bragg\u2019s\u2063 office alleged.<\/p>\n<p>Other items\u200c included \u2064two Etruscan \u2063tile paintings from \u2062Cerveteri, a frequently-looted\u2064 necropolis site northwest of Rome, that date back to 440 B.C.<\/p>\n<p>According to Mr. Bragg\u2019s\u2064 office, the tiles were looted in the 1980s and ended up with\u2063 Symes, who sold them to noted New York collectors Shelby White and Leon \u2063Levy in 1992 for $1.6 million.\u2064 The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/amber-heard-tells-jurors-people-want-to-kill-my-baby-in-the-microwave\/\" title=\"Amber Heard Tells Jurors: \u201cPeople Want to Kill My Baby in the Microwave\u201d\">couple returned<\/a> the tiles to Symes before 1999 \u201cafter questions about their illicit origins\u200d were raised \u200cby multiple scholars,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>The objects remained in Symes\u2019 New York storage unit until they were \u2064seized in March, the \u2063statement said.<\/p>\n<p>The \u200bItalian police art squad said the value of all 266 pieces, on the open market, would come to tens of millions of euros. The \u2064Symes \u2062items are in addition to 750 pieces that\u2064 were in the possession of Symes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Italy rejoices as 266 stolen antiquities, such as Etruscan vases and Roman coins, worth millions, are returned from the US. These treasures, looted and sold to American museums and collectors, include items seized in New York from a British storage unit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":1998551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[543],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1998550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-epoch-times"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/136"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1998550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1998551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1998550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1998550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1998550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}