US Getty Museum returns bronze bust smuggled from Türkiye

In 1971, a bronze bust among 150 artifacts purchased from Swiss art dealer Nicolas Koutoulakis, who was engaged in the black market antiquities trade, will be returned to Türkiye by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles as a result of the determination that it was smuggled from the ancient city of Bubon in Türkiye.

The bronze bust has been in the antique collection of the Getty Villa Museum since it was purchased in 1971.

It was removed from the exhibition to be handed over to Turkish authorities after the museum received new information from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in New York indicating that it had been illegally excavated.

“In light of new information recently provided by Matthew Bogdanos and the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which indicates that this bronze head was illegally excavated, we have agreed that it should be returned to Türkiye,” said Timothy Potts, the museum's director.

Potts added that by returning the bronze head to Türkiye, the museum aims to continue to build a constructive relationship with the Turkish Ministry of Culture's archaeological counterparts in the country.

The bronze head smuggled from Türkiye dates back to between 100 B.C.-100 A.D. and is a separate cast component of a life-size figure, separated from the body at the upper neck. Its eyes were once covered with an unknown material. Researchers have not yet been able to identify the figure's body.

Although an inscribed alpha (“A”) can be seen on the lower back edge on the inside of the neck, it is difficult to make out because the figure was produced in a “highly idealized” style and is not paired with a member of the imperial family or any other person.

In 2011, the Getty Museum returned a tombstone and a tablet manuscript from Koutoulakis to Greece. Koutoulakis has also sold or gifted works to other leading cultural institutions, including the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C.

Some scholars link the bronze head to the archaeological site of Bubon in Burdur province in Southwestern Türkiye. The ancient city of Bubon is known to have been subject to illegal excavations in the late 1960s, and another important Bubon artifact, previously known as the “Philosopher Emperor Possibly Marcus Aurelius,” is currently at the center of a lawsuit between the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Manhattan District Attorney.

Source: Newsroom