Looting Matters

I would like to wish all Readers of LM a very Happy New Year!

At the beginning of 2013 I made a number of predictions. I drew attention to Cambodian antiquities and we have seen items returned. Sotheby's has also agreed to return a piece that had been due to be auctioned.

I also thought that more material would be identified from the Medici archive. This has been the case for items surfacing on the market (e.g. Gnathian krater, the Ackerman Apollo, an East Greek warrior, the Symes torso, the Symes Pan, the Medici Pan, and other items) as well as in established collections such as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (and here).

The J. Paul Getty Museum agreed to return the terracotta head of Hades. The Italian enquiry into a curator at the Princeton University Art Museum came to an end. However there has been no movement on the Villanovan bronze hut. We continue to await the return of material to Greece from the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University.

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has continued to place a veil over the formatio…

I would like to wish all readers of Looting Matters a very happy Christmas.

My attention was drawn to this 'seasonal offering'. Classicists will enjoy some of the antiquities (including a Cycladic figure) contributing to the message.

The two December sales at Sotheby's and Christie's in New York are now complete. This allows me to review the sale of antiquities for 2013. Overall the two auction-houses have sold $32.6 million worth of antiquities in NYC this year, down from $35.6 million last year. Indeed this is the third consecutive fall from $133.8 million in 2010, and $62.4 million in 2011. Indeed 2013 is comparable with 2004 ($32.5 million).

This means that over half a billion dollars worth of antiquities have been sold at the two auction-houses in NYC since 1999, with Sotheby's well ahead of Christie's by some $142 million.

Fabio Isman has a piece on the Medici and Symes pieces surfacing on the New York market ("Pezzi di Medici e Symes all’asta: fino a quando?", Artemagazine December 2013). This draws on the identifications made by Dr Christos Tsirogiannis. It also has the images of one of the objects in the Swiss Gallery.

The piece is a reminder that auction-houses need to undertake a more rigorous due diligence process to prevent these toxic antiquities from appearing at the sales.

I have been looking at the median value of Egyptian lots sold at Sotheby's New York from 1998 to 2013. The December median value has had a steady increase from $3,737 to $27,500. The contrast is with the June sales that have risen from $2,875 to $13,750.