Investigators from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office seized dozens of looted antiquities from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in June, bringing the total number of objects removed from the museum since 2017 to more than 120, collectively valued at over $95 million, per artnews.com.
The seizures were carried out by District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office as part of long-running investigations into post-war antiquities smuggling rings and their US collaborators, according to an inventory reported by the New York Times on July 1. Investigators subpoenaed museum acquisition records linked to dealers suspected of trafficking ties.
Among the dealers connected to the latest removals is Robert Hecht, who sold the 2,500-year-old Euphronios krater to the Met for more than $1 million in 1972. The vase was returned to Italy in 2008. Hecht was repeatedly accused of antiquities trafficking but was never convicted. He died in 2012.
The objects seized in June are believed to have been looted from Italy, Turkey, Egypt and other countries, and range in value from $20,000 to $26 million. They include a first-century CE Roman marble head of a veiled man, a 2,000-year-old bronze statuette from Turkey, and a gold diadem decorated with rams’ heads from ancient Egypt.
The Met said the removals were part of a joint effort with the DA’s office, which shared evidence of looting before the museum conducted its own provenance research. “The Met doesn’t want any stolen art in our collection,” said Lucian Simmons, head of the museum’s 12-person provenance team.
The DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit struck a sharper tone. Unit chief Matthew Bogdanos said the recurring seizures at the Met “spoke for themselves”, adding: “Why are we the ones doing this?”
Simmons said determining an object’s country of origin and ownership history “is not always straightforward”, and that “every individual object deserves to be studied and assessed”.
The Met has faced intensifying scrutiny over its antiquities holdings in recent years, as US prosecutors have accelerated restitution cases tied to 20th-century trafficking networks across the Mediterranean and North Africa.
•Featured image: Marble head of a veiled man, Roman, 1st half of 1st century CE, restituted in June 2026/Metropolitan Museum of Art.