US returns to Italy ANOTHER $80 million-worth of stolen artifacts

There has been a new 'repatriation' (Barbie Latza Nadeau, US returns $80 million-worth of stolen artifacts to Italy CNN May 28, 2024). The return to Italy was possible thanks to the investigations conducted by the Carabinieri and various Public Prosecutor's Offices together with the New York District Attorney's Office and Homeland Security Investigations. The repatriation ceremony was held in the offices of the Central Institute for Restoration’s in central Rome, where some 600 seized and returned works of art were put on display

"Ranging from life-sized bronze statues to tiny Roman coins, from oil paintings to mosaic flooring, the pieces span the 9th century BC to the 2nd century AD and amount to just one year’s stolen and trafficked art confiscated by Manhattan prosecutor Col. Matthew Bogdanos’ team and returned to Italy.

The trafficked works[...] were sequestered in New York and New Jersey last year. The returned works, together with 60 items repatriated last year, are worth more than $80 million (or roughly €73.6 million) — but are just a drop in the bucket when it comes to artwork still hidden away in private warehouses and on display in museums in the United States [...]

Most of the recent items returned to Italy were dug out of clandestine excavations or stolen from churches, museums and private individuals [...] Among the items on display on Tuesday was a cuirass and two bronze heads dating back to the 4th-3rd century BC that were confiscated from a gallery owner in New York. [name?]

There was also an Umbrian bronze statue depicting a warrior stolen from an Italian museum in 1962 that was found in a well-known American museum. [name?] And a mosaic floor depicting the myth of Orpheus enchanting wild animals with the sound of the lyre from the mid-3rd to mid-4th century AD was recovered after being stolen from a clandestine excavation in Sicily in the early 1990s. It was confiscated from the private collection of a well-known New York collector [name?]".

THat's just one DA's office in one US city ("Bogdanos said the $80 million of items does not include a further 100 items his team has just seized in the US'). 

See also:  Tom Kington, "The ‘extraordinary’ haul of looted Roman artefacts and its links to British traders " The Times May 28, 2024.