[MSN] Italy Lends Antiquities to 2 Museums

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

November 29, 2006
Italy Lends Antiquities to 2 Museums 
By RANDY KENNEDY

Courtesy of the Italian government, visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York will find an
unfamiliar antiquity on view today in each institution’s classical
galleries.

The artifacts are the first fruits of separate agreements that Italy reached
this year with those museums to return antiquities that Italian officials
have long contended were looted or removed illegally from their country. In
exchange for the return of the objects — which will include the Euphronios
krater, a 2,500-year-old Greek bowl considered one of the world’s finest,
from the Met’s collection — Italy agreed to offer extended loans of other
antiquities that have rarely or never been seen outside Italy.

The arrival of the artifacts at their temporary homes was timed to coincide
with a visit to the United States by Italy’s culture minister, Francesco
Rutelli, who has taken a high-profile role in his country’s campaign for the
return of looted antiquities.

The two museums are handling his arrival, and that of their new antiquities,
in starkly different ways.

The Museum of Fine Arts, which was not the first museum to make a deal with
Italy but was the first to return disputed objects, held a news conference
with Mr. Rutelli yesterday and stressed that it was also the first American
museum to receive loans of Italian antiquities under the new arrangement.
(Its loan, a large marble statue from the first century A.D., arrived a
couple of weeks ago for conservation work, museum officials said.) 

By contrast, the Met, where Mr. Rutelli is scheduled to meet today with
Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s director, planned no ceremony and did
not even issue a news release to announce the arrival of its loan, a kylix,
a type of drinking cup. Citing security issues, museum officials would not
say exactly when the cup arrived at the Met.

The kylix, made of terra cotta and dating from 560 to 550 B.C., will be on
view starting this morning in the museum’s Robert and Renée Belfer Court,
adjacent to the Great Hall, and will stay through November 2010. It was
discovered at an Etruscan tomb site at Cerveteri, near Rome, the same area
where Italy had long contended that the Met’s prized Euphronios krater had
been looted.

The statue lent to the Museum of Fine Arts will be on view, beginning this
afternoon, in the museum’s Roman Court Gallery, where it will remain through
the fall of 2009. 

The statue, known as Eirene, or the Goddess of Peace, is more than nine feet
tall and was excavated in 1986 from the garden of a villa northeast of Rome.
In Italy the head and torso of the work had been displayed separately, but
conservators in Boston have joined the two pieces for display for the first
time in modern history. 

http://www.nytimes.com/