The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles on Wednesday said it was returning an ancient bronze head to Turkey that it had purchased in 1971 from an antiquities dealer who sold other items to museums that were later found to have been looted.
The museum said the decision was made “in light of new information” provided by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which asserts that the object was stolen in the 1960s from a heavily plundered Roman-era settlement in Turkey known as Bubon.
Neither the museum nor investigators would describe the new information, but the office’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has in recent years been investigating the looting of artifacts from Bubon and has pursued the return of a number of bronze objects that were held by American museums or private collectors.
In one case, investigators seized a statue of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in another, a statue of the emperor Lucius Verus from the home of a philanthropist and Met trustee, Shelby White.
Persons:
Septimius Severus, Lucius Verus, Shelby White
Organizations:
Paul Getty Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Locations:
Los Angeles, Turkey, Manhattan