Cleveland Museum of Art strikes deal with Italy to return 14 ancient
artworks
Posted by mnorman November 19, 2008 08:45AM

In the first agreement of its kind between the Cleveland Museum of Art
and a foreign government, the museum today agreed to return 14 artworks
to Italy after officials proved that the objects had been illegally
excavated or exported.


The museum and Italian authorities from the Ministry of Culture are
scheduled to hold a news conference in Rome at 3 p.m. Wednesday, or 9
a.m. Eastern time, to announce the deal. The agreement concludes what
Cleveland Museum of Art Director Timothy Rub called a friendly and
collaborative 18-month negotiation in which a much longer list of
objects under discussion was whittled to 14.


Key objects in the museum's collection -- including the recently
purchased ancient bronze statue of Apollo Sauroktonos and an ancient
Puglian ceramic known as the Medea Vase -- were on Italy's original list
for discussion, but are not part of the agreement.

"I'm very pleased,'' Rub said, speaking by phone from Rome. "I think
it's always difficult when adverse claims are made against an object or
objects in a museum's collection, but the most important thing to do is
to first of all determine if these claims have any merit, and if they
do, to deal with them as transparently and as thoroughly as possible.
This has been a very open and
thoughtful discussion.''

Italy, for its part, has agreed to loan the Cleveland museum 14 artworks
of equivalent value for 25 years, a period that could be renewed. Italy
has also agreed to work with the Cleveland museum on an exhibition of
artworks from Italian state museums on a subject to be determined.

The agreement is the latest accord on the return of looted or illegally
exported artworks between Italy and other American museums, including
the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston
and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Rub said the agreement with Italy is based on the understanding that
neither the museum nor its directors or curators are in any way tainted
by the return of objects. Instead, Rub said, the understanding is that
the museum innocently acquired objects that "clearly were associated
with bad actors'' at some point in their past.

Rub said he would sign a document formalizing the agreement with
Giuseppe Proietti, the secretary general of the Italian Ministry of
Culture. Sandro Bondi, the head of the agency, would also attend the
signing, along with Maurizio Fiorilli, the lawyer representing the
Italian government in the negotiations.


Of the 14 objects to be returned, 13 are ancient Greek or Italian. The
14th is a 14th-century processional cross from a small town near Siena,
purchased by the museum in 1977. The majority of the objects were
purchased between the 1970s and the 1990s. Rub declined to give names of
dealers involved in the histories of the objects.


Perhaps the most significant object to be returned is an Apulian
red-figured volute krater by the Dorias painter, which stands roughly 4
feet high. Other works include Etruscan silver bracelets; a group of
Neolithic Sardinian bronzes representing warriors; an Attic rhyton, or
drinking vessel, in the shape of a mule; and a Corinthian column krater
the museum acquired in 1990.


"Our experience has been, and I say this in all sincerity, very
positive,'' Rub said. "The representatives of the Italian government
we've worked with have been dedicated to their work and to righting what
they perceive as wrongs, as well they should. But they've also conducted
these conversations reasonably and in a very thoughtful manner. We've
looked at things together and come to conclusions that both sides
believe are fair and equitable.''