Saturday, 2 February 2019

'Iran Says It Has traced Two Ancient Sculptures Stolen Decades Ago'


A limestone bas relief was on show in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1951-2011 when it was stolen. When I reported on this at the time, I suspected for a number of reasons that the head was in fact a fake and wrote so here. I was wrong (OK, we all make mistakes), the object really was looted from Persepolis. the object subsequently was found, the Museum had already taken the insurance money, so the insurance company sold it and it ended up on the stand of Rupert Wace Ancient Art at TEFAF New York in October 2017. It was then seized as illegally removed from Iran in the 1930s. The object returned to Iran on September 27, 2018 and is no being exhibited there. What is interesting is that Iran is now claiming
that it has traced two more Achaemenid bas-relief sculptures stolen from Iran nearly ninety years ago. "We have exactly located the stolen pieces and already started negotiation to take them back," the chief of Iran Cultural Heritage Organization, Ali Asghar Mounesan maintained in a radio show..
Have the records of the Montreal Museum led to the dealer that handled their piece and then other dealings of the same people led the Iranians to another two removed in the same way? Time will tell.
Iran News 'Iran Says It Has traced Two Ancient Sculptures Stolen Decades Ago' January 31, 2019

No comments:

Post a Comment