New York's Met museum returns stolen Greek bronze

NEW YORK

Greece on Feb. 25 said it had recovered from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art a 2,600-year-old bronze artifact stolen from ancient Olympia in the 1930s.

It had previously been "prominently" displayed at the Met's ancient Greek and Roman art collection, the ministry said.

The 25.8-centimeter head was originally a decorative part of a tripod cauldron, which in antiquity were popular religious offerings to gods.

The culture ministry said it had established "beyond any doubt" that the head, willed to the Met in 1971 by financier and former museum vice-president Walter C. Baker, was stolen from Olympia, birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games.

It had been found in 1914 in a riverbed, near an ancient gymnasium used by athletes during the Games. It is believed to have disappeared from a local museum in 1936 before it could be properly catalogued, the culture ministry said.

The head was sold that year to American art dealer Joseph Brummer, it said.

The Met on its website noted that over 600 bronze griffin heads from cauldrons are known today.

The artifact was handed back on Feb. 24 in a ceremony at the U.S. museum by its director Max Hollein.

"We don't want to have any object in our collections that came illegally," the Austrian art historian, who has headed the Met since 2018, said in 2023.

The griffin head was not actually claimed by Athens. It was the Met itself that in 2018 undertook to examine its provenance, Greek Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said.