Italian authorities target Princeton University as well as other U.S. museums in smuggling investigation
By: David Campbell
Two ancient Greek ceramic vases in the Princeton University Art Museum collection came under scrutiny last year from Italian authorities conducting an investigation into alleged antiquities smuggling.
The artifacts in question are an Athenian red-figure wine-cooling vessel, or psykter, dating to approximately 510 B.C.; and an Apulian red-figure ceremonial vase called a loutrophoros, which dates back to about 330 B.C. Both are on exhibit in the museum on the Princeton campus.
The museum acquired them in 1989 legally and in good faith, according to museum Director Susan M. Taylor. But Italian authorities claim the two ancient painted ceramic vases are among a trove of objects that were illegally spirited out of their country by smugglers.
At the center of the Italian investigation is Giacomo Medici, an antiquities dealer who was sentenced in Italy to 10 years in prison in December 2004 for trafficking in illegal art. He is now free while appealing his conviction.
Mr. Medici was accused of acquiring antiquities from grave robbers, having them restored, then selling them to museums and collectors through a network of respectable art dealers.
Italian authorities reportedly have tracked more than 100 objects allegedly looted from Italy to eight museums in the United States, and to museums, gallerIes, and private collections in Europe and Asia.
Investigators have relied on a collection of Polaroid photographs found by police in 1995 in Mr. Medici’s office in Geneva, Switzerland to trace the objects to the institutions cited.
The other seven American museums are the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Va.; Toledo Museum of Art; The Cleveland Museum of Art; and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, according to media reports.
Italian investigators contacted the museum at Princeton University in December 2004 to request details about the 1989 acquisition of the two Greek vases. In January 2005, the art museum provided them with the information requested. Since that time, the museum has received no further communication from authorities in Italy, the museum said in a written statement.
"The museum purchased these vases in good faith and has no knowledge of any wrongdoing associated with their acquisition," Ms. Taylor said in the statement. "If proof of illegality is presented to the museum, the vases will be returned, as we have returned other items in the past."
The museum at Princeton has cooperated with Italian authorities in the past when the provenance of objects in its collection has been in dispute, and will continued to do so, said Ms. Taylor, who has been director there since 2000.
In 2002, the art museum voluntarily returned to the Italian government a Roman marble funerary monument it had purchased in 1985. That decision was made after the museum discovered documentation that the sculpture had been taken out of Italy without a legal export permit, the statement said.
The acquisition policy of the Princeton art museum relies on "extensive due diligence" in researching all objects before adding them to its collection, according to the museum.