Under Pressure, Emory’s Art Museum Admits Some of Its Antiquities ‘Were Looted’

Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum is quietly relinquishing ownership of five antiquities to Italy as it acknowledges, for the first time, that some of its pieces “were looted and illegally exported.”

The changes come after a Chronicle investigation revealed that more than 500 of the Carlos’s artifacts have passed through people linked to the illicit antiquities trade, including some convicted or indicted on charges related to antiquities trafficking. Experts said that the small Atlanta museum relentlessly expanded its collection — primarily of Greek and Roman art — in an effort to rival bigger players like the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But by ignoring red flags in the acquisition process, they said, the Carlos risked aiding the theft of cultural treasures and fueling the destruction of archaeological ruins.

On August 29, six days after The Chronicle’s investigation was published, the Carlos removed an ancient plate and a plate fragment from its catalog and marked them for repatriation to the Italian government. On the same day, it also gave up ownership of three pieces of pottery, which will remain on display as loans from Italy: two cups and a large volute-krater used to mix water and wine.

Late last week, the items’ physical and digital labels were updated to reflect those details, according to Laura Diamond, an Emory spokeswoman. The changes were not announced by the museum but were first spotted by two academics who have been closely tracking the collection.

All five pieces arrived at the Carlos by way of people with documented ties to the illicit trade. And according to a newly installed gallery sign, their shifts in ownership mean that they were stolen.

“Recent and ongoing research in collaboration with foreign government officials has confirmed that several objects in the museum’s Greek and Roman collection were looted and illegally exported,” the placard states, according to a photo obtained by The Chronicle. “Some of these objects have been repatriated to their countries of origin, while others remain with the museum as loans from those countries.”

The sign points visitors to the museum’s website for a “full” list of repatriated pieces, yet as of Wednesday, the link had no information about the Italian antiquities. Diamond declined to answer questions about what caused the Carlos to give up the titles to the five antiquities or how long the transfers had been in the works. (She said that it would elaborate in future news releases.)

Tainted Treasures

For decades, museums across the United States got away with flouting international antitrafficking conventions. Now, public pressure is mounting for them to scrutinize or surrender the very goods that brought them prestige, donations, and visitors. Their reluctance to do so has led to drawn-out negotiations, legal fights, and seizures by law enforcement.

Cynthia Patterson, a professor emerita of ancient Greek history at Emory, has internally raised concerns for years about the Carlos’s collection and was the first to spot that it was parting with some artworks. One was the subject of a paper by a former Emory graduate student in art history, which makes Patterson worry about all the scholarship that may be tainted by what she characterized as the Carlos’s carelessness.

“I think it’s good that there’s some recognition of the problems and good that objects are being returned,” Patterson said. But, she added, the museum should be much more forthcoming about how and why it dug the hole it’s now trying to climb out of.

In the 2000s, the Carlos went on a shopping spree to supersize its Greek and Roman collection. At the same time, alleged traffickers across Europe were being tried and their warehouses raided, the Met and the J. Paul Getty Museum were starting to make returns, and American museums as a whole were tightening their acquisition standards. The Carlos’s then-Greek-and-Roman curator, Jasper Gaunt, said at the time that his charge was to spend a $10-million gift on “not the best, but the very best.” Two of the antiquities now being restored to Italian ownership were purchased on his watch, in 2003 and 2005.

“It’s good news that the Carlos is undertaking due diligence, but, of course, that due diligence should have been taken right at the beginning,” said David Gill, an archaeologist and fellow with the Centre for Heritage at the University of Kent, in England, who for years has criticized the Carlos’s seeming indifference to concerns about shakily provenanced antiquities.

Neither Gaunt, who left the Carlos in 2018, nor Bonnie Speed, the director from 2002 to 2021, returned requests for comment.

The rest of the antiquities now coming under Italian ownership were acquired before Gaunt’s tenure, in 1986, 1990, and 1994. Maxwell L. Anderson, the director from 1987 to 1995, said that the previous handlers and histories of the two objects acquired during his time, including the volute-krater, were not considered taboo at the time. “In those days, I would describe them as uncontroversial purchases and gifts,” he said. “I don’t think they would pass muster today.” He added, “If there’s evidence of” an object “having been illicitly acquired, it should go back.”

The two cups and plate that the museum is ceding possession of are linked to either Gianfranco Becchina or his wife, Ursula Becchina, who together operated a gallery in Switzerland. In total, there are more than a dozen objects at the Carlos that passed through either Becchina, according to a Chronicle review of the online catalog.

Authorities say that for almost 40 years, Gianfranco Becchina ran a vast trafficking ring that plundered tombs throughout Italy. He has been convicted in Greece of receiving stolen antiquities, and in Italy, more than 6,000 of his artifacts were confiscated in 2011 after a judge determined them to be looted. He has previously denied that he was a trafficker and said that all his activity in Switzerland was “in compliance with the rules and customs of the country.” Reached for comment in August, he also said his wife was unavailable to comment due to poor health.

The enormous volute-krater now on loan is dated to around 330 B.C. and attributed to an artist known as the Underworld Painter. It depicts, in intricate red-and-black detail, the Greek myth in which the nymph Melanippe tries to save her twins from being killed by fearful onlookers. The museum says it came from a collector who is said to have purchased it from a Swiss dealer and reported frontman for the Italian dealer Giacomo Medici. In 2004, Medici was convicted of conspiracy to traffic in antiquities by an Italian court. He has denied all wrongdoing.

Finally, the Carlos is returning a shard of a ceramic plate it bought at auction, which had previously been held by Peter Sharrer, a New Jersey dealer. It won’t be the first item of his to be repatriated to Italy. In 2002, the Princeton University Art Museum sent back a Roman funerary monument it had bought from Sharrer after discovering it had been illegally exported. (“He had all the papers and was extremely thorough,” the then-director told The New York Times.) Calls to phone numbers for Sharrer were not returned.

Patterson said that she is unimpressed with how the Carlos has handled these issues so far. In her view, a placard alluding to “several” looted items won’t cut it. “The problem is much more than ‘several objects’; it’s everywhere,” she said. “It’s so deeply a part of the collection.”

“There’s an honor code at a university,” she added. “We should be rooting all that stuff out, not just bit by bit.”