CPAC and the Keros Haul

CPAC March 2026

The meeting of CPAC in March will be discussing the proposed extension of the cultural property agreement with Greece. The webpage is illustrated with an image of a Cycladic figure currently on long-term loan to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Leonard N. Stern collection. The figure appears in the catalogue of the Keros Haul (no. 170). Is the use of a figure apparently derived from (or associated with) a notorious example of looting in the Cyclades really the best choice of image? What about other figures from the Haul that reside in other North American collections?

Members of CPAC may find it helpful to read about the Stern collection:

Gill, D. W. J. 2025. "Artwashing the Cyclades: The Leonard N. Stern Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." BMCR.

Tsirogiannis, C., D. W. J. Gill, and C. Chippindale. 2025. "A Corrupt Cycladic Corpus of Marble Figures." Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies 13: 203–33.

Gill, D. W. J., and C. Tsirogiannis. 2025. "The Stern Collection of Cycladic Figures and the Metropolitan Museum of Art." MeditArch 38: 1–24.

 

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Towards a Corpus of Cycladic Figures

One of the ideas said to have come out of the Cycladic workshop at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is the creation of an online corpus of Cycladic figures.  The organisers of the workshop may not have been aware of these studies:

• Tsirogiannis, C., D. W. J. Gill, and C. Chippindale. 2022. "The Forger’s Tale: An insider’s account of corrupting the corpus of Cycladic figures." International Journal of Cultural Property 29: 369–85. [CUP]
• —. 2025. "A Corrupt Cycladic Corpus of Marble Figures." Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology & Heritage Studies 13: 203–33.[DOI]

We discuss the Future of the Cycladic Corpus with the following sub-divisions: An Archaeologists' Corpus; A Connoisseurs' Corpus; An Unresolved Corpus; and An Outcast Corpus. The Leonard Stern collection even has its own section: 'Learning from a recently formed private collection'. My BMCR review of the Stern collection also has a section on 'A Potentially Corrupted Corpus'.

We hope that those who have an interest in the importance of the archaeological context for these figures will be allowed to steer the project and (perhaps even more importantly) will assess whether or not it is a project worth pursuing.

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Drawing attention to "provenance" at the Met

Courtesy of Christos Tsirogiannis

One of largest group of repatriated material from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art was dervied from Palladion Antike Kunst and from Mr & Mrs Gianfranco Becchina.

The items include:

1. Attic bf lekythos, attributed to the manner of Elbows Out. Inv. 1985.11.3 [Until 1985, with Galerie Antike Kunst Palladion, Basel, Switzerland]; acquired in 1985, purchased from the Galerie Palladion. Deaccessioned for return to Italy in September 2022. Bibl. BAPD 16461.  
2. Attic bf mastos, attributed to Psiax. Inv. 1975.11.6 [Until 1975, with Galerie Antike Kunst Palladion, Basel, Switzerland]; acquired in 1975, purchased from the Galerie Palladion. Deaccessioned for return to Italy in September 2022. Bibl. BAPD 4525; Mertens 1979, 23 n. 13, pl. 9.1–4; Mertens 2010, 28–29, fig. 14. 
3. Attic bf amphora fragment, attributed to Lydos. Inv. 1985.11.1. [Until 1985, with Galerie Antike Kunst Palladion, Basel, Switzerland]; acquired in 1985, purchased from the Galerie Palladion. Deaccessioned for return to Italy in September 2022. Bibl. BAPD 14695; Bothmer 1985, 40–41, 56, fig. 25, n. 48.  
4. Attic bf amphora fragment, attributed to the Amasis painter. Inv. 1985.11.2. [Until 1985, with Galerie Antike Kunst Palladion, Basel, Switzerland]; acquired in 1985, purchased from the Galerie Palladion. Deaccessioned for return to Italy in September 2022. Bibl. BAPD 14683; Bothmer 1985, 34, 108, no. 17.  
5. Attic bf amphora fragment, attributed to the Amasis painter. Inv. 1985.53. [Until 1985, with Galerie Antike Kunst Palladion, Basel, Switzerland]; 1985, acquired by Dietrich von Bothmer, purchased from Galerie Antike Kunst Palladion; acquired in 1985, gift of Dietrich von Bothmer. This artwork was restituted in September 2022. Bibl. BAPD 14680; Bothmer 1985, 76, no. 2bis.  
6. Attic wg cup, attributed to the Villa Giulia painter. Inv. 1979.11.15. [Until 1979, with Galerie Antike Kunst Palladion, Basel, Switzerland]; acquired in 1979, purchased from the Galerie Palladion. Deaccessioned for return to Italy in September 2022. Bibl. BAPD 5330; Bothmer and Mertens 1979/80, 14–15; Mertens 1987, 59, no. 41; Picón, C.A. et al. 2007, 118, 430, no. 129; Connelly 2007, 111–12, fig. 4.19, pl. 8. 
7. Pair of gold Apulian cylinders. Inv. 1981.134.1, .2 [Until 1981, with Gianfranco Becchina]; acquired in 1981, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Gianfranco Becchina. Deaccessioned for return to Italy in September 2022. 

You would think that it would make the curatorial staff at the MMA sensitive to any other material with this association. Thus, it came as a bit of a surprise that the example used in the Cycladic symposium today to show how "provenance" is displayed on the MMA website used the Cycladic figure that Christos Tsirogiannis identified from the Becchina archive. And the slide used quoted the "public" statement of previous history:

[By 1981, collection of Noroyoshi Horiuchi, Tokyo]; [until 1983, with Ariadne Galleries, New York]; 1983, acquired by Leonard Stern, purchased from Ariadne Galleries, New York; 1983-2022, collection of Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Stern, New York; 2022, transferred to Greece; 2024-2034, on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Hellenic Republic.

The mention of the Becchina association was left unmentioned in the presentation even though that particular individual has been associated with objects handled by Horiuchi.

This does not feel like a rigorous engagement with the origins of the Stern collection. 

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A Cycladic(ising) Journey

In September 2025 New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art returned a number of items, including Cycladic, to Greece. The EC collared jar (inv. 2004.342.1) was significant enough to include in S. Hemingway, "Art of the Aegean Bronze Age." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 69 (2012), 21, fig. 34, and it is a reminder that as recently as 2004 the museum had been receiving suspect Cycladic material.

The controversial long-term loan of the Stern collection of Cycladicising material will be celebrated today by a symposium, "Journey to the Cyclades: Exploring the Early Cycladic Culture of Greece". Hemingway is due to be speaking about cultural patrimony. One hopes that the Director, Max Hollein, will talk about the reason why the Met has had to return so many hundreds of Etruscan, Greek and Roman antiquities to the countries where they were found. 

It is disappointing to see that issues relating to context and authenticity are not addressed as explicit topics by specific speakers. Will the issue of the figure that appears in the Becchina photographic archive be rehearsed? And will the Greek position on figure fragments derived from the Keros Haul [not a "Hoard"] be made clear?

For further discussion of the Stern collection see:

Gill, D. W. J. 2025. "Artwashing the Cyclades: The Leonard N. Stern Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art." BMCR. 

—. 2025. "Leonard Stern Collection of Cycladic Antiquities". Museum of Looted Art. 

—. and C. Tsirogiannis. 2025. "The Stern Collection of Cycladic Figures and the Metropolitan Museum of Art." MeditArch 38: 1–24.

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