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| Septimius Severus. Source: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek |
It has been announced that the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen will be returning the bronze head of Septimius Severus to Türkiye ("The Glyptotek returns Roman bronze portrait to Türkiye", press release, November 26, 2024). It forms part of a series of imperial bronze statues from the sebasteion at Bubon: the press release notes Bubon returns from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fordham Museum of Art, Worcester Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Shelby White Collection. The head was acquired from Robert Hecht.
This will put increased pressure on the Cleveland Museum of Art over the claims relating to the bronze "Marcus Aurelius" that has been linked in The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art to Bubon (A. P. Kozloff, "Bubon: a re-assessment of the provenance," Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74 [1987] 130-43).
The announcement from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek includes 48 architectural terracottas linked to Düver, and also acquired from Hecht. This will put pressure on other museums in Europe, North America and beyond to return the Düver terracottas that they acquired.
Details of previous returns from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek can be found in David W. J. Gill, "The Returns from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen," in Artwashing the Past: Context Matters (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), 27–31.
