Cleveland Museum Drops Lawsuit Over Statue

       Out-of-Place artefact (Twitter)         

In a significant move, the Cleveland Museum of Art has dropped its legal challenge of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and surrendered an ancient bronze masterpiece, a sculpture of Marcus Aurelius, that is currently the subject of a criminal investigation concerning its looting from Bubon, Türkiye.

In August 2023, the office of New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg had seized the sculpture from the Cleveland Museum of Art (though it actually physically remained at the Museum). The district attorney’s office was conducting a criminal investigation into the looting of antiquities in Turkey that had been trafficked through New York and this was included in the case as one of those items. The headless life-size sculpture, "Draped Male Figure", identified as a sculpture of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius has been valued by Museum assessors at more than $20 million. The Manhattan district attorney’s office, led by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, is investigating the looting of the sculpture from Bubon, Türkiye. 

The museum had bought the sculpture in 1986 for $1.85 million from Edward H. Merrin Inc., a New York art gallery. It’s estimated the sculpture dates to somewhere between 150 and 200 B.C. [...] The statue has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the 1960s, the Indianapolis Museum of Art from 1971 to 1974, the Minneapolis Institute of Art from 1976 to 1980 and Rutgers University in 1981.

None of whom had any qualms about it, apparently.

In the aftermath of the seizure, instead of gracefully relinquishing the challenged item, or producing all the documentation showing its legal excavation and provenance, legal acquisition by a seller in the source country and legal export (which are what is in question), in October 2023, the museum filed a lawsuit against the Manhattan district attorney’s office to block the seizure of the statue, which it considers one of the most significant works in its collection of approximately 61,000 objects.

The lawsuit sought a judicial declaration affirming the museum’s rightful ownership of the statue. A museum spokesperson, Todd Mesek, stated that the institution "takes provenance issues very seriously", highlighting its longstanding commitment to cultural property matters and transparency in how works are presented in its galleries. The museum also noted that it has voluntarily returned pieces in the past when provided with persuasive proof that they belonged elsewhere. However, in this case, the lawsuit argued that the district attorney’s office had failed to provide convincing evidence that the statue was stolen property belonging to Turkey. The lawsuit emphasised a lack of scientific and archaeological evidence regarding the statue’s origins, with some studies even questioning whether the statue had ever been in Turkey.

Reference: Adam Ferrise, 'Cleveland Museum of Art sues New York district attorney over seizure of statue valued at $20 million' Cleveland.com Oct. 19, 2023.