Düver fragments returned to Türkiye from Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Source: VMFA

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has announced that it has deaccessioned 41 fragments of the Düver frieze that it acquired in the 1970s (Press Release). Details of the acquisition were provided:

In 1978, VMFA purchased 34 terracotta reliefs from Summa Galleries in Beverly Hills, California, and six additional reliefs were received as gifts from Chicago-based antiquities dealer Harlan J. Berk. The following year, Summa Galleries gave another relief to VMFA, resulting in 41 polychrome terracotta relief fragments from the temple being added to the museum’s collection.

A fragment from a separate New York private collection had been returned in 2022. 48 fragments of the frieze had been returned from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in 2024.

Other museums with parts of the frieze will no doubt be contacting the authorities in Türkiye.

These returns show that the 1970 UNESCO Convention is no longer the benchmark for making the case for repatriations. 

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