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Headless Bronze Seized from Cleveland Museum of Art


Al Kowsky

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A headless 76 in. tall bronze figure, supposedly of Marcus Aurelius, was seized from the Cleveland Museum of Art by orders of the Manhattan District Attorney, as reported in an article by the Associated Press. The museum acquired the bronze in 1986 & valued it at $20 million. It has been alleged by the government of Turkey, without solid evidence, that it was one of many objects looted from their country 🙄.

HeadlessBronzeStatuefromtheC.M.A..webp.c58687f0033748c391d06e343f57028e.webp

https://apnews.com/article/roman-statue-cleveland-museum-turkey-f89b0a7b70295cf63b82e5d43e2947f9

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Interesting that the museum supposedly said in 2012 that they think it may have been found in Turkey in the 1960s, they're just not sure. The very village the museum suspects it may have come from, Bubon, is the same village that is now apparently at the heart of the smuggling ring the Manhattan DA is investigating and which resulted in the statue's seizure.

Sounds like the DA may have finally uncovered some evidence of the looting, or at least reason to believe it did in fact come from Bubon, which the museum seems to think is quite possible anyway.

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I'm sure that the Cleveland Museum of Art would have been a good place for the statue. But that's international law. Various countries made an agreement and if we don't honor and follow these agreements we have chaos.

Apart from that: I hope that all of these busts and statues are somehow fixed to the ground and more stable than they look? 
When I'm in a museum, I'm always afraid that I could stumble and accidentally tear some marble busts to the ground... $20 million would be significantly more than my insurance coverage.

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13 hours ago, Salomons Cat said:

Apart from that: I hope that all of these busts and statues are somehow fixed to the ground and more stable than they look? 
When I'm in a museum, I'm always afraid that I could stumble and accidentally tear some marble busts to the ground... $20 million would be significantly more than my insurance coverage.

I think that I have finally found an answer to this question, in a different article about a different museum, but better than nothing:

Quote

'The busts were affixed to shelves with a nail but if you pull them down with force, they will come off,' Matteo Alessandrini, a spokesman for the Vatican Museums, told CNN.

Source: US tourist, 65, is arrested for smashing two ancient Roman sculptures after being told he couldn't see Pope Francis at the Vatican

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If you read the first dozen news reports about the American tourist who smashed two Roman busts last October, the only information about him one can find is that he was 65 years old and an immigrant from Egypt.   Otherwise he is a complete cypher.  Even his name is not reported.  I find that odd.  

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11 hours ago, Hrefn said:

If you read the first dozen news reports about the American tourist who smashed two Roman busts last October, the only information about him one can find is that he was 65 years old and an immigrant from Egypt.   Otherwise he is a complete cypher.  Even his name is not reported.  I find that odd.  

I wonder if he has some kind of cognitive disability… „Smashed busts because he was told that he couldn‘t see pope Francis“ just sounds a bit out of the ordinary to me. 

But apart from that I believe that names of criminals are rather rarely made public in Europe. In Switzerland, there are some „special cases“ of well known criminals that are convicted since many years and for some reason newspapers still don‘t report their full name. Although I don‘t know why. Force of habit, maybe.

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