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Should Antiquities Return to Where They Came From?
26 Plays2 years ago
This week host Benjamin Miller engages Lillian Stoner, a scholar of classical antiquity, in a wide-ranging discussion about the quirks and inequities of provenance, tomb robbery, and repatriation as it concerns objects of the ancient world. Of particular concern is the infamous “hot pot” that was once on display in New York City: the Euphronios or Sarpedon Krater, a monumental bowl for mixing wine with water, decorated with red-figure paintings by the Attic virtuoso Euphronios. Acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for over $1 million in 1972, it was repatriated to Italy in 2008 after decades of investigations into its questionable origins.
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Transcript
Returning Stolen Antiquities
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
Last month, the District Attorney of Manhattan, Alvin Bragg, announced that he had secured the return of $19 million worth of stolen antiquities to Italy.
00:00:25
Speaker
The month before that, he had announced the return of $5 million worth of antiquities to Turkey and $9 million to Lebanon.
00:00:31
Speaker
The month before that, $3.5 million to Italy.
00:00:34
Speaker
And before that, $1.25 million to Libya, $20 million to Greece, $725,000 to Yemen.
00:00:40
Speaker
Alvin Bragg is on the warpath, and he's not the only
Repatriation Movement and Ownership Questions
00:00:44
Speaker
one.
00:00:44
Speaker
Across the Western world, the repatriation movement is in full swing.
00:00:48
Speaker
Centuries of questionable acquisitions of antiquities are finally being, well, questioned.
00:00:55
Speaker
And it's not just sketchy dealers and rarefied collectors.
00:00:58
Speaker
Major prestigious museums are feeling enormous legal and social pressure to examine their holdings and return what rightfully belongs elsewhere.
00:01:07
Speaker
But, of course, this raises the question, what does rightfully belong elsewhere?
00:01:13
Speaker
And I'll be honest, for me, the answer can sometimes seem very uncertain.
00:01:16
Speaker
Looting is bad, obviously, but scholarship and conservation are good.
00:01:21
Speaker
And sometimes major museums far from where these objects originated are pretty well equipped to do that.
00:01:28
Speaker
Colonial exploitation is bad, but what about legitimate trade and legal artifacts?
00:01:34
Speaker
And is there something to be said for the millions of people who visit the world's great museums and can see objects there versus the tiny number who are able to travel to see them in their sometimes very remote places of origin?
00:01:45
Speaker
And as I'm talking, I know some of you are already having arguments in your head, and that is great.
00:01:50
Speaker
It's a subject which is as sensitive and provocative as it is important.
00:01:55
Speaker
So...
The Sarpedon Crater Controversy
00:01:56
Speaker
Today on Curious Objects, we are going to take the bull by the horns.
00:02:01
Speaker
Or more to the point, we're going to take the jug by the handles.
00:02:05
Speaker
Our curious object for today is the Sarpedon crater, also known as the Euphronius crater.
00:02:11
Speaker
That's crater with a K.
00:02:13
Speaker
We'll get into what that means.
00:02:14
Speaker
But this is a colossal classical Greek two-handled bull from around 515 BC.
00:02:21
Speaker
If you've seen a copy of the Iliad translated by Robert Fagles, you've probably seen this piece before.
00:02:27
Speaker
The cover of that book is illustrated with the painting from this piece.
00:02:32
Speaker
Everyone agrees it's an incredibly important object, but what's been harder to agree on is where it belongs.
00:02:39
Speaker
And for decades, one of the world's greatest museums was completely fooled about where this thing actually came from.
00:02:46
Speaker
Today, we are going to pull apart the story of this masterpiece from its ancient Greek origins to its excavation and rediscovery, the very juicy investigations around it and the controversial negotiations between people from museums and national governments and law enforcement, where the piece ended up today and whether that decision was the right one.
Introducing Lillian Bartlett Stoner
00:03:09
Speaker
And I'm delighted to have the chance to do all that together with a brilliant young antiquities specialist, Lillian Bartlett Stoner.
00:03:18
Speaker
Lillie lives and breathes antiquities.
00:03:20
Speaker
She studied the subject at Harvard and NYU.
00:03:22
Speaker
She's worked at the Metropolitan Museum and the Boston MFA.
00:03:26
Speaker
She advises collectors and museums around the world.
00:03:29
Speaker
And Lillie, I'm thrilled to welcome you to Curious Objects.
00:03:32
Speaker
Well, thanks so much for having me, Ben.
00:03:34
Speaker
I'm a big fan.
00:03:36
Speaker
Okay, I have some rapid fire questions for you.
00:03:38
Speaker
Are you game?
00:03:40
Speaker
I'm game.
00:03:41
Speaker
I'm ready.
Q&A with Lillian Bartlett Stoner
00:03:42
Speaker
What is the most sexually perverted work of art at the Metropolitan Museum?
00:03:48
Speaker
Oh my god.
00:03:50
Speaker
Ancient?
00:03:51
Speaker
Well, that's what you know best, but if you have something else in mind, bring it on.
00:03:57
Speaker
Sorry, Mom.
00:03:57
Speaker
Sorry, Dad.
00:03:59
Speaker
I think I would have to say something.
00:04:02
Speaker
It's colloquially known as the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, and it is an Egyptian work where a woman is reclining, sort of, and an enormous phallus is being inserted into her by dwarves.
00:04:20
Speaker
Okay, that's pretty scandalous.
00:04:22
Speaker
All right, you've been exiled forever to a desert island.
00:04:26
Speaker
What object are you bringing with you?
00:04:28
Speaker
And is it Snow White and the Seven Dwarves?
00:04:32
Speaker
No, I mean, I don't need to look at that every day.
00:04:35
Speaker
I would take a cameo in Vienna.
00:04:39
Speaker
It's sardonic.
00:04:41
Speaker
It's beautiful.
00:04:42
Speaker
It's a little bigger than pocket size, purse size, perhaps.
00:04:45
Speaker
And it celebrates the incestuous power couple Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II.
00:04:52
Speaker
And I suspect it's never been buried.
00:04:56
Speaker
And I just want to touch it every day.
00:04:58
Speaker
You still managed to get a little sexual impropriety in there.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, maybe I guess they did have offspring.
00:05:06
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:06
Speaker
True.
00:05:06
Speaker
I'll stay away from that.
00:05:09
Speaker
What is the first object that you remember falling in love with?
00:05:14
Speaker
Oh, actually, yeah.
00:05:17
Speaker
I was about 17.
00:05:19
Speaker
I traveled to Europe for the first time.
00:05:21
Speaker
I was at the Louvre.
00:05:22
Speaker
And I walked into that great gallery with the huge painting of Napoleon crowning himself by David.
00:05:31
Speaker
And I was blown away.
00:05:33
Speaker
I couldn't care.
00:05:34
Speaker
That's about the Mona Lisa, but the detail there and still love it.
00:05:39
Speaker
You have been banned from your current field.
00:05:42
Speaker
You have to pick a new specialty.
00:05:43
Speaker
What is it?
00:05:45
Speaker
Oh, God.
00:05:46
Speaker
Oh, God.
00:05:46
Speaker
I'd like to be a lawyer.
00:05:50
Speaker
I'd like to legitimize my argumentative streak, and I think I'd like to change some current laws affecting antiquities.
00:05:58
Speaker
So you're going to take a short hop from antiquities specialist to antiquities legal specialist.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:06
Speaker
All right, what movie has to you the most interesting depiction of material culture?
00:06:12
Speaker
I don't know about interesting, but I would say definitely Gladiator.
00:06:17
Speaker
You can fight me on this.
00:06:19
Speaker
There's so much good stuff, some not so good stuff, but what a movie.
00:06:24
Speaker
I think also Hans Zimmer, genius.
00:06:28
Speaker
I think it's fair to say that Russell Crowe's abs count as an example of material culture.
00:06:34
Speaker
Okay, what lost object would you most like to discover?
00:06:39
Speaker
There's so many lost objects.
00:06:42
Speaker
You can't find them all, but maybe you can find one.
00:06:45
Speaker
Okay, I mean, Alexander the Great's funeral purse.
00:06:51
Speaker
Tell me about that.
00:06:53
Speaker
So they had to bring him back from Babylon to be buried.
00:06:57
Speaker
The hearse was diverted by Ptolemy the Great, Ptolemy who made himself the king of Egypt.
00:07:05
Speaker
And yeah, but it was a massive thing described as, you know, ivory gold.
00:07:11
Speaker
I mean, it certainly doesn't survive, but that I would like to see.
00:07:16
Speaker
All right, I'm sold.
00:07:17
Speaker
I'll start looking tomorrow.
00:07:19
Speaker
Start looking.
00:07:20
Speaker
What's one misconception that people have around antiquities that you'd like to correct?
00:07:26
Speaker
Oh, um...
00:07:28
Speaker
Well, I think people think classical art is all boring white sculpture, some of it nude, and orangey squirrely little vases full of obscure myths.
00:07:41
Speaker
And in reality, it's hilarious.
00:07:44
Speaker
It's aesthetically and technically, I think, totally brilliant.
00:07:48
Speaker
And it's frequently raunchy.
00:07:51
Speaker
As you've already demonstrated for us.
00:07:54
Speaker
That can continue to demonstrate.
00:07:56
Speaker
I'm sure you will.
00:07:59
Speaker
On the other hand, what would you say is the most overrated classical work of art?
00:08:04
Speaker
I think there's some Roman marbles, copies of Greek originals that are so-so.
00:08:11
Speaker
I don't know.
00:08:12
Speaker
I think we're missing a lot of the good stuff.
00:08:14
Speaker
Okay.
00:08:15
Speaker
The capital on Venus, for instance, overrated.
00:08:19
Speaker
Shots fired.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:21
Speaker
Take that.
00:08:23
Speaker
What's one book that you would recommend an amateur read to start to understand your field?
00:08:30
Speaker
This is an easy one.
00:08:32
Speaker
It's my favorite, published in the 70s.
00:08:34
Speaker
It's Martin Robertson's Greek art.
00:08:38
Speaker
It's in two volumes by this great Oxford Don.
00:08:42
Speaker
And it's just beautiful, gentle British prose.
00:08:47
Speaker
And it brings it all together.
00:08:48
Speaker
The illustrations are really crappy, black and white, tiny.
00:08:53
Speaker
But if that bothers you, then Google them.
00:08:56
Speaker
I think it's a wonderful resource.
00:08:58
Speaker
What's the coolest art discovery or decorative arts discovery that you've made?
00:09:04
Speaker
Not really sure, but I would say I loved excavating in grad school.
00:09:11
Speaker
I did it for about 10 seasons.
00:09:13
Speaker
And I think my favorite summer, I was excavating a late Roman, super luxurious, totally fallen apart, colonnaded street in Turkey.
00:09:26
Speaker
and discovered some fun things.
00:09:29
Speaker
The second story had a mosaic floor, it had marble columns, it had glass windows, and it had a toilet.
00:09:38
Speaker
A toilet?
00:09:39
Speaker
A toilet, yes.
00:09:40
Speaker
And there was this unassuming clay downspout.
00:09:44
Speaker
And an Oxford researcher who happened to be in the area analyzed it and found that it did indeed have incrustations of ancient urine.
00:09:54
Speaker
That guy was quite a character.
00:09:55
Speaker
Wow.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:09:59
Speaker
So I just loved how it all came together.
00:10:01
Speaker
So fire maybe caused an earthquake and then this men sort of structure collapsed upon itself and just sifting through stratigraphically is just so satisfying and so fun.
00:10:12
Speaker
What was the last object or artwork that you saw that gave you shivers?
00:10:17
Speaker
You know, it was a month ago at the National Museum in Athens, and I'd never seen it before.
00:10:24
Speaker
It was it's this Mycenaean gold foil scale, and it was found in a child's grave in Mycenae.
00:10:34
Speaker
And it had all these kind of wafer-thin little medallions, each decorated with a butterfly.
00:10:43
Speaker
And so usually in Greek art, a butterfly is a symbol of the soul.
00:10:47
Speaker
And so the idea is this was probably related to the psychostasia, the weighing of souls after death.
00:10:54
Speaker
And I just found it so incredibly moving.
00:10:56
Speaker
We don't know so much about ancient religion.
00:10:59
Speaker
And that really got me.
00:11:01
Speaker
Okay, well, we'll be right back to talk with Lily about the Euphronius crater.
00:11:07
Speaker
First, just a reminder that we've posted pictures of this magnificent object at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:11:15
Speaker
You can find me on Instagram at Objective Interest and Lily at Lily Agoria, that's L-I-L-Y underscore A-G-O-R-A-I-A, where she posts in
00:11:26
Speaker
I love this series where she associates popular songs and musical compositions with works of antique art.
00:11:39
Speaker
It's so much fun.
00:11:41
Speaker
Check her out there.
00:11:42
Speaker
You can also email me with your comments or suggestions for Curious Objects episodes at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com.
00:11:52
Speaker
If you're enjoying this episode, do me a favor and hit the pause button.
00:11:55
Speaker
I promise we'll be here when you come back and then hit the write a review button.
00:12:00
Speaker
Just give us a few words about what you like about Curious Objects.
00:12:04
Speaker
It doesn't have to be anything fancy.
00:12:06
Speaker
Every single review and rating is a huge help for me in bringing more listeners to the show and helping me to entice fantastic guests like Lily to take the time to talk with us.
00:12:16
Speaker
And now that we're putting out weekly episodes every single Wednesday, which I hope you're enjoying, by the way, those ratings and reviews make even more of a difference.
00:12:25
Speaker
I am so grateful to all of you who have supported the show in that way.
00:12:30
Speaker
And please keep it coming.
00:12:34
Speaker
Okay, so Lily, let's talk about the Euphronius crater.
Artistry of Greek Vases
00:12:39
Speaker
And before we get into just how important and influential this piece is, tell me, what is a crater anyway, and how is it used?
00:12:48
Speaker
Oh yes, okay.
00:12:49
Speaker
So, vases are my favorite.
00:12:53
Speaker
They're technically so ingenious shape-wise, and if you've ever tried to make a little clay pot, you know how hard they are to do.
00:13:04
Speaker
Mine are always sort of lopsided turds, and each shape is made for a very precise purpose.
00:13:10
Speaker
um craters were really the focal point of the symposium this all-male gathering a drinking party um that took place in the andron a man cave if you like in a greek house um so couches were set up around the perimeter of this room and the crater would have been smack in the center of the room that all-important vessel that contained wine diluted with water
00:13:38
Speaker
And it's a great fun thing because the host got to pick the dilution of water to wine.
00:13:45
Speaker
So if they wanted sort of a wilder party, they would have less water.
00:13:50
Speaker
Wow.
00:13:50
Speaker
Okay.
00:13:50
Speaker
So this is like, you know, vodka versus wine.
00:13:57
Speaker
Well, yeah, and we don't know quite how strong wine was when it was undiluted, but I have a feeling it was significantly stronger than the sort of 12-14% we have today.
00:14:08
Speaker
So I described this piece as colossal, but tell us just how big is it?
00:14:14
Speaker
Well, it's a big boy.
00:14:16
Speaker
I looked up the dimensions today.
00:14:18
Speaker
It's nearly half a meter tall, and the rim is even wider, 55 centimeters.
00:14:25
Speaker
and it would have held something like 45 liters of wine so just uh the scholarly comparison um your standard keg holds 50 liters so wow it's big okay so and it's decorated with painted scenes on both sides what are those scenes yeah so i had to give a little just little
00:14:51
Speaker
a little bit of a talk about how, what painting on basis really means, because it's sort of a misnomer.
00:15:00
Speaker
This one's painted in the red figure technique, but nothing was really painted.
00:15:05
Speaker
Instead, painters were using a dilute solution of clay, which was called a slip, sort of a suspension.
00:15:12
Speaker
And it was basically invisible ink.
00:15:15
Speaker
So they would, everything that they wanted to be black on this crater,
00:15:21
Speaker
they would paint with a very fine brush this invisible ink.
00:15:25
Speaker
So each beautiful body would be sort of outlined, all the anatomical details would be rendered in on this wet clay, still unfired.
00:15:37
Speaker
And the background itself would have been completely washed with this slip.
00:15:43
Speaker
And so then it went into the kiln and was fired several times with several different levels of oxygenation.
00:15:49
Speaker
And voila, the parts of the dilute slip would turn black and the rest would be left that gorgeous clay color, the red.
00:15:59
Speaker
So it's incredible the detail that they were able to manage basically by not even seeing what they were doing or.
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, that really puts this in context, especially when listeners look at these images, I think they'll find that incredibly impressive.
00:16:20
Speaker
So with that technique, what did the artist behind this crater actually depict?
00:16:27
Speaker
So he's on the obverse, that big front side, the most famous piece.
00:16:32
Speaker
He's showing the body of Sarpedon, who's this half mortal, fortunately two mortal, son of Zeus, that great big oversized body.
00:16:44
Speaker
And he had just been killed by Patroclus in the Trojan War.
00:16:50
Speaker
And so you can see he's stretched out, he's overlarge.
00:16:53
Speaker
If he stood up, his head would go right out of that frame.
00:16:58
Speaker
And he's, other than these wounds that have been added, you can see them in added red paint, paint that is, he's beautiful and his body is displayed as such.
00:17:08
Speaker
Every hair is in place.
00:17:11
Speaker
His face is serene.
00:17:12
Speaker
His eyelashes are gorgeous as well.
00:17:17
Speaker
And to his
00:17:19
Speaker
Right and left, those winged figures are Hypnos and Thanatos, so sleep and death.
00:17:25
Speaker
And they're carrying him off the battlefield.
00:17:28
Speaker
And then standing right behind him is Hermes.
00:17:32
Speaker
And this is Hermes' psychopompus.
00:17:34
Speaker
So Hermes, the escorter of the soul.
00:17:37
Speaker
So he's going to take Sarpedon to the underworld, as it were.
00:17:44
Speaker
Right.
00:17:44
Speaker
So this explains why it's called the Sarpedon crater, but we've also referred to it as the Euphronius crater.
00:17:52
Speaker
What does that mean?
00:17:54
Speaker
Well...
00:17:56
Speaker
Athenian painters and potters were not short on ego.
00:18:01
Speaker
They didn't always sign their works, but Euphronius in this case did.
00:18:06
Speaker
He signed it Euphronius a Grabson.
00:18:09
Speaker
Euphronius made this.
00:18:12
Speaker
And his painting style, even if he didn't sign it, is so distinctive that real experts are able to attribute his work even when he doesn't sign.
00:18:24
Speaker
How significant would you say this piece is amongst the universe of ancient Greek artifacts?
00:18:32
Speaker
I mean, I think Euphronius is one of the
00:18:37
Speaker
Attic painters was one of the top.
00:18:39
Speaker
He was one of the pioneer group who sort of really was innovative in making things more naturalistic.
00:18:49
Speaker
So I think it's important art historically.
00:18:52
Speaker
But it's one of the many, many, many gorgeously rendered vases around.
00:18:59
Speaker
I would also point out that these terracotta vases were not necessarily so valuable in antiquity at all.
00:19:08
Speaker
the real super rich got metal vessels.
00:19:14
Speaker
So the big Tegara items were bronze and especially silver and gold.
00:19:19
Speaker
And it's thought by some people that the aesthetics of these silver and gold, specifically tarnished silver and gold, might have been the inspiration for the black and red figure terracotta examples.
00:19:34
Speaker
That's interesting.
00:19:34
Speaker
So these were not, yeah, they're not like high works of art necessarily.
00:19:39
Speaker
Obviously, they were valued and cherished.
00:19:41
Speaker
So it's a great example.
00:19:43
Speaker
And although it's not intact, it was found in fragments and restored.
00:19:48
Speaker
It's, I think, virtually complete, which is also unusual.
00:19:53
Speaker
Okay, so I'm really excited to get to this excavation process and how that all went down.
00:19:59
Speaker
So the object really has been all over the place.
00:20:03
Speaker
And geography is such a crucial part of the story that we're exploring today.
00:20:09
Speaker
And just to be clear, we've described this piece as Greek, but it wasn't actually found in Greece, was it?
00:20:16
Speaker
No, it wasn't.
00:20:18
Speaker
It's one of these strange, strange things about Greek phases, most of them.
00:20:25
Speaker
most of the ones that are in good shape other than Lekithoi have been found outside of Greece and they've been found in southern Italy and Etruria and Sicily.
00:20:36
Speaker
And one of the reasons for that is thought to be that they were balanced for ships.
00:20:41
Speaker
So the ships would go, they were going to buy grain from sort of the bread baskets of the Mediterranean.
00:20:50
Speaker
And these would be sort of balanced to take one way.
00:20:53
Speaker
and then the grain would come back.
00:20:56
Speaker
So I think light bulbs might already be starting to appear for some listeners because now we're talking about an object made by Greeks.
00:21:05
Speaker
But in this period, the Greeks were actually not only trading, but also colonizing in Italy and across the Mediterranean.
00:21:14
Speaker
And this is, of course, is a different category of colonization from what we typically think about these days.
00:21:20
Speaker
When we think about repatriation, often we're thinking about colonizers returning things to their former colonies, Europeans who established colonies across Africa and Asia and the Americas.
00:21:34
Speaker
And here it's a little different, but the context is super important.
00:21:38
Speaker
So let's try to get to the bottom of this.
00:21:41
Speaker
So what do we know about when this piece was excavated and who did it?
Euphronius Crater's Dubious History
00:21:48
Speaker
Okay, so depends who you ask, but it's conventionally accepted that it was looted illegally by local tomb raiders in 1971, and from Cervetteri, which is north of Rome, it's in Tuscany.
00:22:09
Speaker
And then it came into the possession of Giacomo Medici, who was sort of a runner between these Tomberoli and dealers, and later Bob Hecht, who was an art dealer.
00:22:24
Speaker
And where did it go from there?
00:22:25
Speaker
Well, it passed through Switzerland, as many things did in the 1970s, where it was restored in Zurich.
00:22:34
Speaker
And then it was sold to the Met in 1972.
00:22:38
Speaker
for a million dollars, as I recall.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yes.
00:22:41
Speaker
As you mentioned, it's quite an extraordinary price, certainly in the 1970s.
00:22:45
Speaker
And it was so extraordinary at the time, yeah.
00:22:49
Speaker
And of course, immediately the price raised all sorts of concerns and rumors and a lot of attention almost immediately.
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:00
Speaker
So when they bought this piece in 1972, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, did they have reason to believe that it might have been looted?
00:23:08
Speaker
What did they think or what was the plausible or ostensible story for its provenance?
00:23:15
Speaker
Well, I think...
00:23:18
Speaker
Let's start off honestly.
00:23:20
Speaker
I'm not sure how concerned museums were in the early 1970s with provenance.
00:23:25
Speaker
It was a very different climate and due diligence wasn't what it was today.
00:23:33
Speaker
However, Bob Het, the dealer who sold it to them, provided at the time documentation that he had acquired it from a Lebanese dealer, Mr. Sarafian, and he provided documentation that Sarafian's father had acquired it in 1920.
00:23:49
Speaker
He gave all sorts of banking information showing how the money had passed hands.
00:23:54
Speaker
So...
00:23:58
Speaker
There were rumors right from the beginning.
00:24:01
Speaker
It attracted a lot of press attention.
00:24:05
Speaker
And Tom Hoving, the director in the 70s, after he retired, referred to it as the hot pot.
00:24:16
Speaker
He has a lot of one-liners, but in any case.
00:24:20
Speaker
And I love that Bob Hecht claimed that he was taking a 10% commission on this sale from the Lebanese collector you mentioned, Sorok.
00:24:30
Speaker
And as we'll get to in just a minute, turns out that was a slight understatement of what his margin was on that piece.
00:24:40
Speaker
And again, I mean, the Met, I think it's very easy to point fingers now.
00:24:47
Speaker
But I think they did.
00:24:48
Speaker
They were sending their legal team to investigate and try to get more documentation on this.
00:24:56
Speaker
Yeah, so things at this point got really wild, right?
00:24:59
Speaker
Because so the Met, they sent, you know, a private detective to Zurich and they sent lawyers to Beirut to talk with Seraphion.
00:25:09
Speaker
And it seemed like they were turning up evidence disproving that the piece had been illegally excavated and supporting the story that it had been in Lebanon.
00:25:21
Speaker
And so... Yeah, in a hat box.
00:25:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:25
Speaker
Yeah, right.
00:25:26
Speaker
And so that's basically how things stood for another 20 years, right?
00:25:33
Speaker
Yeah, yes.
00:25:34
Speaker
And really, when the Italians began to really systematically investigate Giacomo Medici, again, this runner, when they raided his warehouse, they found photos of him posing next to the Euphonius crater at the Met.
00:25:52
Speaker
kind of grinning and another of Bob Peck doing the same.
00:25:57
Speaker
And they slowly started to unravel this relationship.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:01
Speaker
These are not the Italian police we're talking about.
00:26:05
Speaker
These are not your ordinary beat cops.
00:26:06
Speaker
This is the Carbonieri.
00:26:08
Speaker
The semi-military police force with fancy uniforms riding on their horses.
00:26:14
Speaker
Gorgeous uniforms.
00:26:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:26:16
Speaker
And they have the most sophisticated art crime, you know,
00:26:22
Speaker
And anywhere, are quite a unit anywhere and are quite pragmatic people, I will say.
00:26:29
Speaker
So they found in their investigation into Medici and subsequently into Bob Hecht that in fact, Hecht had not bought this from this Lebanese dealer, Serafian, but from Medici for, drumroll, $350,000.
00:26:48
Speaker
So he was taking a very, very healthy profit when he sold this thing to the Metropolitan Museum.
00:26:55
Speaker
And in turn, it seemed that Medici had bought this piece from Tomb Raiders for $88,000.
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:06
Speaker
So everybody was getting their healthy markup in here.
00:27:11
Speaker
Have I got this all right so far?
00:27:14
Speaker
You have, although you missed the very weird part where they raided Hecht's Paris home and found this handwritten personal memoir describing two ways how you acquired the crater.
00:27:28
Speaker
On the one hand from Medici and on the other one from Seraphion.
00:27:32
Speaker
So again, it's all sort of weird and circumstantial, even now.
00:27:39
Speaker
So he was essentially keeping two sets of books.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure.
00:27:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:27:45
Speaker
But it's interesting, you know, and maybe we can talk about this later.
00:27:48
Speaker
I mean, it's very, they're good dealers and bad dealers and they're a set of bad dealers, especially now in the seventies and eighties that were, they were probably doing, they were buying in the legitimate trade and they, they were buying from Tom Baroli.
00:28:07
Speaker
Right from the source.
00:28:09
Speaker
But I think it's very dangerous just to dam an object because they're connected to one of these dealers.
00:28:14
Speaker
I think there has to be a much more sensitive approach.
00:28:18
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:28:23
Speaker
When did making plans get this complicated?
00:28:26
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, and I think it's so important to take these matters on a case-by-case basis, which is why we're talking about a specific object and not this sort of... We'll get to some of the broad philosophical arguments, but I think it's really important to ground it in actual facts or facts to the degree that we can determine what they are.
00:29:11
Speaker
And so...
Metropolitan Museum's Repatriation Agreement
00:29:13
Speaker
At this stage in the 1990s, the Carbigneri have done their investigation.
00:29:17
Speaker
They've turned out all of these damning and suspicious, if not outright disqualifying details about Hecht's operation.
00:29:28
Speaker
So Bob Hecht is unmasked, so to speak.
00:29:32
Speaker
And this now leaves the Metropolitan Museum with a tough decision to make.
00:29:37
Speaker
Because they had fairly convincing evidence that one of the most important ancient Greek pieces in their collection, which they had owned at this point for over 20 years, 25 years, that this piece had been illegally excavated and looted.
00:29:49
Speaker
And obviously the Italians wanted their piece returned.
00:29:54
Speaker
And so before you tell us what actually happened from there, I'm curious, you know, if you were in the shoes of the director of the Metropolitan Museum at this point, and I know this is an impossible hypothetical because of all of the factors they have to consider, but just from a sort of gut intuitive perspective, what do you think you would have done?
00:30:15
Speaker
I think
00:30:19
Speaker
Felipe Montebello had a horribly difficult decision to make.
00:30:25
Speaker
I think it probably broke his heart.
00:30:27
Speaker
I think it probably broke Carlos Picón's heart.
00:30:31
Speaker
I think the evidence still was circumstantial enough that they felt...
00:30:36
Speaker
weird, but the press was so bad and the evidence was damning enough that I think he had to do it.
00:30:45
Speaker
And I think I probably would have done the same thing, even though I think it should have stayed at the Met for various reasons.
00:30:53
Speaker
So what did they ultimately agree to do?
00:30:57
Speaker
Well, I think the agreement was
00:30:59
Speaker
was not a bad one.
00:31:01
Speaker
So in 2006, they agreed that the crater would be returned and in exchange for the next 40 years, Italian works of equivalent artistic significance are given on loan to the Met for four year periods.
00:31:18
Speaker
And that's a great thing, actually, these bilateral loans.
00:31:23
Speaker
I think that's a very positive development.
00:31:26
Speaker
I wish it happened more.
00:31:28
Speaker
And so where exactly did the Euphronius crater end up?
00:31:33
Speaker
Well, it had a big splashy homecoming, uh, nostos.
00:31:40
Speaker
And when it was first returned in 2006 with about 20 other pieces, um, it was a very sentimental thing for the Italians and a very well attended homecoming in Rome.
00:31:52
Speaker
Then it went to the Villa Giulia, a museum for Etruscan art, also in Rome, for a period.
00:32:00
Speaker
And now it is in a tiny museum in Trivetri, the site that it was likely looted from.
00:32:07
Speaker
And do you think that the return of an artifact like this one tends to drive more people to visit its new home, or in this case, I guess, its very old home?
00:32:20
Speaker
I think it's case by case.
00:32:22
Speaker
I think in this case, no.
00:32:24
Speaker
I've read figures that it's about 12,000 people visit Chigaturi every year.
00:32:32
Speaker
And the crater is on the second floor, so one has to sort of make an effort to get up there.
00:32:40
Speaker
It doesn't look terribly well lit to me in the photos that I've seen of the installation, although I haven't visited it since it's been there.
00:32:50
Speaker
So I don't know.
00:32:55
Speaker
I would have preferred that at least it had remained in Villa Giulia, in Rome.
00:33:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:01
Speaker
I mean, certainly many more people would have seen it at the Met.
00:33:05
Speaker
More people would have seen it in Rome than see it at this little archeological museum of Cerbiteri, which, you know, to be clear, this is a, as you've described, is quite a small museum an hour outside of Rome.
00:33:19
Speaker
And so is it fair to say that something has been lost as a result?
00:33:24
Speaker
I think I think access is a really important thing.
00:33:28
Speaker
And I think that's why museums, that's that's why they exist.
00:33:33
Speaker
Now, at least it is available to be seen by the public.
00:33:38
Speaker
It's not stuck in the storeroom.
00:33:40
Speaker
That's another fear that I have when things are repatriated, that they'll never be seen again.
00:33:46
Speaker
So I don't think any knowledge is lost, but I do think accessibility has been greatly decreased.
00:33:52
Speaker
Now, I'm curious, the piece was looted originally from Italy, but as we've discussed, even before that, it was a Greek object and a singular artifact of the achievement of Greek culture and of this great Greek artist, Euphronios.
Greece's Potential Claim on Euphronius Crater
00:34:08
Speaker
Was there ever any thought that it should actually go back to Greece instead of Italy?
00:34:13
Speaker
Not that I know of.
00:34:15
Speaker
Maybe they should have a go at it.
00:34:17
Speaker
I mean, I guess it hadn't been legally exported, so I guess that would be the main... Yeah, I don't know.
00:34:26
Speaker
I guess the statute of limitations has run out.
00:34:30
Speaker
On the exportation of this piece in 515 BC?
00:34:31
Speaker
Yes, I think so.
00:34:32
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
So the Greeks may have lost their legal claim.
00:34:43
Speaker
But I wonder, I mean, we talk so much these days about repatriation for cultural and social reasons, even more so than legal reasons, even when pieces may have been exported legally.
00:34:56
Speaker
their native countries sometimes still feel that they have a moral claim to those objects.
00:35:03
Speaker
Right.
00:35:03
Speaker
In that context, it's a little surprising to me that a piece like this hasn't been the object of Greek interest.
00:35:12
Speaker
It is a bit surprising.
00:35:14
Speaker
But...
00:35:15
Speaker
I don't know.
00:35:16
Speaker
I mean, they, I hate to say that a museum is saturated, but if you go to the storerooms of most museums in Greece, they don't have room.
00:35:32
Speaker
I mean, so I would understand a sentimental argument, but I think, I think logistically and it wouldn't make too much sense for them.
00:35:43
Speaker
So, I mean, today to export an important antiquity or an important work of art from a country, you generally have to get a license or an export permit.
00:35:56
Speaker
But of course, that's a recent development for most of history that trade was largely unregulated.
00:36:02
Speaker
So let's imagine instead of having been looted, this piece had been legally exported, say, in the early 19th century, which now we're describing a scenario that's a little bit closer to the famous debate over the Elgin marbles or the Parthenon marbles.
00:36:18
Speaker
But in that scenario, how might you think about its rightful home?
00:36:23
Speaker
I imagine surely it would still be at the Met in that case.
00:36:28
Speaker
I think absolutely it would, yeah.
00:36:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:36:32
Speaker
Do you think that legality of the transaction really makes a fundamental difference to the rightful home of an object of that significance?
00:36:42
Speaker
It's tough as an American, right?
00:36:45
Speaker
I mean, I don't feel that it necessarily adds anything to the object if it's nearer to its place of manufacture.
00:36:58
Speaker
I just don't.
00:37:00
Speaker
But if I were Greek or Italian, I might feel very, very differently.
00:37:07
Speaker
So it's a hard one.
00:37:10
Speaker
I don't know.
00:37:10
Speaker
What's your take on it?
00:37:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:14
Speaker
I mean, I have to say, I share your instinct about that.
00:37:18
Speaker
I'm a dealer.
00:37:19
Speaker
And so my basic assumption is that works of art are made for consumption and that consumption is part of an economic context and an economic exchange.
00:37:35
Speaker
And I know that for some people that economic element can feel dirty.
00:37:41
Speaker
It can feel profane.
00:37:45
Speaker
And for me, it doesn't really.
00:37:52
Speaker
Well, having worked as a dealer for five years myself, I share your opinion, but I do think that the massive prices that antiquities started to fetch in the 70s, 80s, 90s, they really did make looting a problem.
00:38:12
Speaker
So in that sense, I think that drove commerce, and now here we are with this repatriation sort of...
Impact of Repatriation on Antiquities Field
00:38:22
Speaker
Yeah, and to be clear, I'm not advocating for a sort of laissez-faire, unregulated, you know, go loot whatever you want kind of scenario.
00:38:35
Speaker
I do think that, you know, regulations and protections are critical and that national governments do have at least the legal right to oversee the kinds of commerce that are done within their borders.
00:38:49
Speaker
That being said, I think from a from the sort of moral perspective, I feel that if the laws have been complied with and if the legitimate democratic government of a country has decided that a certain kind of transaction is permissible.
00:39:07
Speaker
I can't really find any basis to complain about that.
00:39:11
Speaker
Yeah, I quite agree.
00:39:15
Speaker
I think my biggest concern now is that the sort of the atmosphere right now, especially in New York for antiquities, but the U.S., Germany also, Switzerland to some extent, this kind of dogmatic response
00:39:35
Speaker
drive for repatriation actually coming from the da's office and you quoted you quoted um um those figures earlier yeah yeah yeah and so i'm more familiar with the sound bites of bogdano's um but he is yeah he's the ada he's made a special art art crime unit in new york and
00:40:02
Speaker
They are actually the ones instigating these repatriations.
00:40:07
Speaker
And I do wonder, first of all, what his endgame is.
00:40:13
Speaker
And I also wonder what's going to happen to these great old collections that now things can never go.
00:40:20
Speaker
They can never enter the legitimate trade.
00:40:23
Speaker
Or if they can, they can do so very quietly.
00:40:26
Speaker
and they can never be requested to museums which is what these collectors had in mind to begin with and I think that is a tragedy because all of this information will be lost
00:40:39
Speaker
Within a generation.
00:40:41
Speaker
Well, and I think that, you know, one factor that is so often overlooked is, you know, it's easy to say that all of these pieces ought to belong in museums and that ideally they should be in the museums closest to their original homes and that to some moral intuition that that can feel right.
00:41:00
Speaker
But yeah, yeah.
00:41:01
Speaker
The reality is that interest in these objects isn't self-propagating.
00:41:06
Speaker
It requires maintenance, it requires enthusiasm, and it requires resources.
00:41:12
Speaker
And generally speaking, the people who provide that enthusiasm and those resources...
00:41:17
Speaker
Well, the collectors are a huge part of that.
00:41:20
Speaker
The people who endow the museum positions to study these pieces and who fund the museum wings to display them, not to mention the people who, of course, keep the gears of commerce churning in terms of the private market.
00:41:40
Speaker
And I do have a concern that if those people who are, you know, easy to demonize, but if those people feel boxed out of the market to the point that they can't really have any fun participating in it anymore, that can have some pretty serious knock on effects in terms of the legitimate study and interest that the public can maintain in these really important objects.
00:42:09
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:42:11
Speaker
And, you know, I think I think collectors get a very bad rap.
00:42:15
Speaker
I think most have, especially in my field, probably your field, too.
00:42:22
Speaker
They're not it's not contemporary art.
00:42:24
Speaker
There's no they're not investments as much as as those things.
00:42:30
Speaker
And I think I think there's a true love and appreciation for these objects.
00:42:35
Speaker
They're almost putting their money where their mouths are.
00:42:38
Speaker
I had one collector friend, and I'll paraphrase because I don't quite remember what exactly she said, but about looting, she's like, Jesus, I'd rather, I would no more want to see the head of my favorite statue in my living room than I would like to see the head of my favorite person chopped off and in my living room.
00:43:00
Speaker
And I
00:43:02
Speaker
Horrendous.
00:43:03
Speaker
And I think another aspect about this kind of loss of knowledge and the current paranoia, and it goes in the scholarly academic route too.
00:43:15
Speaker
So a lot of scholarly journals will not publish
00:43:19
Speaker
artworks that are in private collections they won't publish things without a provenance before 1970 so not only these things cannot be seen in museums they're just lost the knowledge of them will just disappear and I had a professor in grad school who said he would never enter the house of someone who collected antiquities
00:43:46
Speaker
Even though, I mean, my entire scholarship was paid by a famous collector of antiquities, and it was insane.
00:43:54
Speaker
Incredible.
00:43:55
Speaker
There's a lot of hypocrisy.
00:43:57
Speaker
A lot of biting the hand that feeds you, I suppose.
00:44:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:44:01
Speaker
But fear also on the term.
00:44:03
Speaker
Academics want to keep their digs.
00:44:05
Speaker
They want to keep the host countries happy.
00:44:08
Speaker
But I do fear that lost knowledge, I think, more than anything.
00:44:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:15
Speaker
And again, I don't want people to get the impression that we're sort of, you know, weeping over the poor fate of these wealthy independent collectors.
00:44:24
Speaker
You know, they're going to be fine.
00:44:26
Speaker
But the concern really is is about the material and the role that these people inevitably play and have for all of human history since the very first patrons who purchased pieces like this in 500 B.C.
00:44:39
Speaker
You know, the
00:44:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:43
Speaker
That economic exchange has always driven the value, not just the financial value, but the cultural and social value of these works of art.
00:44:53
Speaker
And I feel there is a risk of overcorrection against that reality.
00:44:58
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's what's happening now.
00:45:00
Speaker
And I hope it swings back the other way.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:45:04
Speaker
Okay, before we go, I just, and I know we can do a whole episode or a series of episodes about this, but I have to ask you about the most famous repatriation controversy in the world, the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles.
The Elgin Marbles Debate
00:45:20
Speaker
So give me the CliffsNote version on this.
00:45:23
Speaker
First of all, what do you call them?
00:45:26
Speaker
I call them the Elgin Marbles.
00:45:30
Speaker
And do you think they should be returned?
00:45:33
Speaker
Ah, well, I have to say that they were legally exported under the Ottoman Empire.
00:45:41
Speaker
And I think the Brits actually did pretty good service in getting them out there when they did right before the whole east side of the Parthenon blew up and the rest of the things were sort of polluted beyond repair.
00:45:56
Speaker
That said, having recently visited Athens, they've done such a beautiful job with the Acropolis Museum, and it would be so nice to have them bathed in their wonderful Athenian light, looking at the Parthenon itself.
00:46:14
Speaker
I don't know.
00:46:15
Speaker
I leave the legal situation to Amal Clooney.
00:46:19
Speaker
But I do think that the Brits
00:46:23
Speaker
really saved those things.
00:46:25
Speaker
And I think that's no small thing.
00:46:30
Speaker
And I also think there's sort of the root of somehow of Western appreciation of Greek art.
00:46:39
Speaker
It's
00:46:40
Speaker
That's how it was known.
00:46:41
Speaker
That's kind of the first.
00:46:43
Speaker
There was Vinconon who had never been to Greece.
00:46:45
Speaker
And then there were these sculptures, beautiful sculptures, sort of suddenly accessible.
00:46:51
Speaker
Now, they're not beautifully displayed in the British Museum.
00:46:54
Speaker
They need a little facelift.
00:46:55
Speaker
Fair enough.
00:46:57
Speaker
Yeah, I noticed that despite the fact that it was the Ottomans who sold them, there's been no effort that I'm aware of by the Turks to try to buy them back from the Brits.
00:47:15
Speaker
I can just imagine the revolt that would spring up overnight in Greece.
00:47:21
Speaker
It would be kind of fun, right?
00:47:26
Speaker
Well, you know, a tribute to the fundamentally international character of these works of antique art.
Episode Conclusion
00:47:33
Speaker
Lillian Barlet-Stoner, thank you so much for joining me.
00:47:35
Speaker
This has been a lot of fun and a real pleasure.
00:47:39
Speaker
Thanks so much, Ben.
00:47:40
Speaker
Thanks for inviting me.
00:47:43
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support by Sarah Bellotta.
00:47:49
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:47:53
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:47:55
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.
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Speaker
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