[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/DT6548.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tInvestigators from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg\u2019s office seized dozens of ancient artifacts from the Metropolitan Museum in June, reports the New York Times<\/em>. According to an inventory produced by the office, this brings the total number of artifacts it has removed from the Met since 2017 to more than 120, collectively worth more than $95 million.<\/p>\n \n\tThe removals have followed on the office\u2019s investigations into the work of the international smuggling rings (and their stateside collaborators) who dominated the global antiquities market after WWII. In the process of identifying potentially illicit artifacts, they subpoenaed records on objects acquired by the museum from dealers suspected of ties to trafficking networks.<\/p>\n \n\tAmong those dealers associated with the latest round of seizures is Robert Hecht, who sold a 2,500-year-old Greek vase known as the Euphronios krater to the Met for more than $1 million in 1972. After a long negotiation, the Met returned it to Italy in 2008. Hecht himself was accused several times of antiquities trafficking, but was never convicted. He died in 2012.<\/p>\n \n\tThe objects removed in June, believed to have been looted from Italy, Turkey, Egypt, and other countries, range in value from $20,000 to $26 million. They include a first-century CE Roman marble head from Greece, a 2,000-year-old bronze statuette from Turkey, and a gold diadem decorated with rams\u2019 heads from ancient Egypt.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a statement, the Met described the removal as part of a joint effort by the museum and the DA\u2019s office, with the office sharing with Met officials evidence they felt indicated the items had been looted, and the museum returning them after conducting their own provenance research.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe Met doesn\u2019t want any stolen art in our collection,\u201d said Lucian Simmons, head of the Met\u2019s team of 12 provenance experts, in a statement. \u201c[The D.A.\u2019s office] has been an invaluable partner to us in this work\u2014particularly their ability to unlock information that would otherwise be inaccessible.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe D.A.\u2019s office, however, expressed impatience with the pace of Met\u2019s reviewing process. According to the Times<\/em>, Matthew Bogdanos, who leads the Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the District Attorney\u2019s office, said the recurring seizures at the Met \u201cspoke for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe question has to be asked, \u2018Why are we the ones doing this?\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\tFor its part, the museum insists it is moving at due speed. \u201cDetermining which corresponding present-day country a work came from, and the object\u2019s unique ownership history, is not always straightforward,\u201d Simmons said in his statement. \u201cWhich is why this work takes time and every individual object deserves to be studied and assessed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/manhattan-d-a-seized-dozens-of-antiquities-from-met-in-june-1234790907\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/DT6548.jpg?w=1024″] Investigators from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg\u2019s office seized dozens of ancient artifacts from the Metropolitan Museum in June, reports the New York Times. According to an inventory produced by the office, this brings the total number of artifacts it has removed from the Met since 2017 to more than 120, collectively […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2021532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2021532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2021532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2021532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2021532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2021532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}