[MSN] The Cleveland Museum of Art is next on the list of American museums from which Italy will seek the return of ancient treasures it says were looted from Italian soil.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Italy asks museum to return works
It traces antiquities to tomb raiders
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Steven Litt
Plain Dealer Art Critic

The Cleveland Museum of Art is next on the list of American museums from
which Italy will seek the return of ancient treasures it says were looted
from Italian soil.

Maurizio Fiorilli, the Italian government lawyer leading negotiations with
American museums, confirmed Friday that he has been trying to open
discussions with the Cleveland museum as part of an international campaign
to halt the trade in illegally excavated antiquities.

He said three e-mails to the museum have gone unanswered, although he
acknowledged that the e-mails may not have been addressed properly and may
be missing.

In the latest message, sent Dec. 20, Fiorilli said he proposed that the
museum send representatives to Rome in February for a discussion about how
the Cleveland museum could return ancient works in exchange for long-term
loans from Italian museums.

"We are available to sit around a table to examine in complete serenity the
basis of our requests," Fiorilli said Friday, speaking by phone from his
office in Rome.

Timothy Rub, director of the Cleveland Mu seum of Art, was in New York on
Friday and could not be reached for comment.

As recently as Tuesday, how ever, Rub said that he had received no
communications from Italy regarding works in the museum's collection. In
recent months, he has said that the museum is willing to speak with Italian
officials once official contact is made.

Italian authorities say evidence unearthed in a police raid on a warehouse
in Switzerland in 1995 exposed direct links between tombaroli -- tomb
robbers -- and art dealers who then restored the works and later sold them.
The authorities say the dealers provided each work with a fake ownership
history, or provenance, to cover up its origin.

American museums check with agencies that monitor art thefts, such as the
International Foundation for Art Research, before buying such works to see
if they were stolen. But because no prior records exist for looted works, it
is impossible to know their exact origins. Museums say that in such cases,
it is better to buy and exhibit antiquities than to pass them up.

Over the past year, however, Italy has used public pressure and evidence
from the raid in Switzerland and other investigations to persuade the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and
the Museum of Fine Arts Boston to return dozens of ancient treasures.

"We offer loans of long duration for those who return objects we seek, and
there is no damage to culture or to the museums," Fiorilli said. "Our goal
is to sever clandestine excavations and illegal international traffic in
antiquities from Italy."

Fiorilli declined to specify which works Italy wants returned from the
Cleveland museum's permanent collection, saying that it was a matter of
delicacy and that he wanted to preserve space for negotiation.

"It's not great numbers," he said.

Evidence from the 1995 police raid is at the core of Italy's criminal trial
against Marion True, a former curator at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles;
and Robert Hecht, an art dealer based in Paris and New York.

Attorneys for both have said their clients are not guilty of any crime.

The Cleveland museum bought eight works from Hecht between 1951 and 1990,
although it is not known whether those are the specific objects that will be
sought by Italy.

"We know that we can't take all of the collection," Fiorilli said.

"We are interested in working on this side by side."

To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:

slitt at plaind.com, 216-999-4136