Friday 28 March 2008

Antiquities from the Shelby White Collection to go on Display in Rome

Lee Rosenbaum has reported that nine antiquities formerly in the possession of Shelby White will go on display in the Palazzo Poli in Rome tomorrow (March 29). It appears that a list of the ten antiquities (one will follow the other nine) has yet to be issued. Why the delay? What is there to hide?

Shelby White no doubt hopes that this will mean closure. But will it? Is this just the end for the antiquities that featured in the Glories of the Past catalogue?

Remember Elisabetta Povoledo's comments last year ("An Impasse in Italian Talks Over Return of Artifacts", New York Times, May 26, 2007):
Last November [2006] the Italian Culture Ministry presented Ms. White with a list of more than 20 pieces in her collection that its investigators had tracked to dealers who Italy says have been linked to looted antiquities. (The list was narrowed to nine during the negotiations.) Those dealers include Giacomo Medici, an Italian antiquities dealer who is appealing a 2004 conviction in a Rome court for dealing in illicit archaeological artifacts, and Robin Symes, a London dealer under investigation here who has not been indicted.
What are the other ten objects? Do they appear in the Geneva Polaroids?

And what about other pieces in her collection that did not appear in Glories?

I remain interested in the archaic bronze volute-krater of Trebenishte type that has been on fairly long-term loan to Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Will the full details of its past collecting history be disclosed?

Image
Attic red-figured calyx-krater attributed to the Eucharides painter. Once in the Shelby White collection; once on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; perhaps handed over to Italian authorities. Source: The New York Observer.

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