Historic deal signed to return looted treasures to the Met

ROME -- New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art will return 21 looted artifacts to Italy in exchange for loans of other treasures in a deal signed Tuesday that the Italians called a model for other museums with stolen goods in their collections.\nMet chief Philippe de Montebello said the agreement with officials from the Italian Culture Ministry "corrects a number of improprieties and errors committed in the past" and would encourage museums to put in place new legal and ethical measures.\nThe deal calls for the Met to return the Euphronios Krater, a 6th-century B.C. painted vase that is one of the Met's prized antiquities and widely regarded as one of the finest examples of its kind.\nThe museum bought the vase from an American art dealer for $1 million in 1972. Italy says it was stolen from a site near Rome. The Met agreed in Tuesday's deal to give it back to Italy by Jan. 15, 2008.\nThe Met also will return 16 pieces of Hellenistic silver known as the Morgantina collection by Jan. 15, 2010. Four Greek earthenware treasures dating from 320 B.C. to 520 B.C. will be returned to Italy as soon as possible.\nIn exchange, Italy will loan the Met objects of "equal beauty and historical and cultural significance," and the two sides will cooperate on future excavations, research and restoration work.\nItaly waived any right to pursue legal action against the museum or its staff over the disputed items.\n"Italy has won, but the Metropolitan has not lost," Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione said after the signing ceremony.\nThe agreement ends a decades-long dispute that was pushed into the spotlight by a fresh Italian campaign to recover artifacts it says were illegally taken by tomb raiders and sold to museums around the world.\nA 1939 Italian law states that any ancient artifact found in a dig belongs to the state.\nAs part of the Italian crackdown, a former curator from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is on trial in Rome, accused of knowingly purchasing stolen artifacts from Italy for the museum. The former curator, Marion True, has denied wrongdoing.\nThe Italians have asked the Getty to return 42 items Italy believes were stolen, including a statue of Aphrodite that the museum bought for $18 million in 1988.\nButtiglione said he hoped Tuesday's agreement could "be a model for further agreements" with other cultural institutions.\nAntiquities experts and archaeologists praised the deal but said it will have no broader significance unless the Met and other museums are forced to change their policies to prevent the acquisition of looted treasures.\nArchaeologists want museums to have clear-cut guidelines specifying that they will not buy recently unearthed antiquities that have no clear history of legitimate ownership.\nTuesday's deal does not require the Met to alter its acquisitions policies.\nDe Montebello said that, even without new policies, museums already are looking more closely into the provenance of new acquisitions because they cannot afford not to do so.\n"There is no question that the very fact of this agreement, which calls for the return of a number of objects bought expensively with public funds, will compel boards of trustees of American museums to be especially vigilant when they are prepared to spend considerable sums on antiquities," he said.\nIn the agreement, the Met provided a list of 12 possible replacements for the Euphronios Krater that could be loaned on a rotating basis for four years each. The krater itself could be loaned under the deal.\nThe agreement calls for the Morgantina collection to alternate four years in Italy with four years at the Met. Italy would loan the Met pieces of equivalent quality when the Morgantina collection is in Italy.\nAlso, Italy will loan the Met a single "first quality" artifact for a four-year renewable term to replace the four earthenware pots.\nThe agreement is to last 40 years.