Euphronios Krater returned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Monday, 21 January 2008 21:50

ROME, ITALY - The Euphronios Krater, a twenty-five-hundred-year-old vase at the heart of a three-decade tug of war between the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Italian government, received a hero’s welcome in Italy on Friday, reports the Elisabetta Povoledo in the New York Times.
 
Povoledo also reports that, in an unprecedented agreement, the New York philanthropist Shelby White has ceded ten classical antiquities from her private collection that Italy contends were looted from its soil, the Italian culture minister confirmed this week. Nine of the ten ancient Greek and Etruscan objects were delivered on Wednesday to the Italian Consulate on Park Avenue and will soon be crated and shipped to Italy, the minister, Francesco Rutelli, said in an interview in Rome.
 
Rutelli said that White’s decision was “extraordinarily positive,” as well as groundbreaking. “It is a generous and open-minded gesture,” he said. Unlike the museums, which will receive long-term art loans under the agreements, White will receive nothing other than Italy’s thanks in return. (The New York Times, January 21, 2008)