Princeton to Return Looted Art to Italy

Saturday, 27 October 2007 19:52

ROME, ITALY - Princeton University announced that its art museum had reached an agreement to return eight ancient works to Italy that the Italian government says were looted and illicitly exported. The pact calls for the Princeton University Art Museum to send back four of the objects immediately and to keep four on loan for the next four years, the university said in a statement. In a partial victory of sorts, Princeton will keep seven other pieces that had been part of negotiations.

The accord, which is to be signed here on Tuesday, was reached after nearly 18 months of talks. Reached by telephone, Maurizio Fiorilli, an Italian government lawyer who heads a negotiating committee on restitution issues, described the negotiations as “cordial but tough.”

Several pieces in the museum’s collection had come under the scrutiny of Italian officials who investigate trafficking in looted artifacts. Princeton said that three of the eight works being returned to Italy were part of an Italian inquiry in 2004. Those are a Greek psykter, or vase for cooling wine, from the sixth century B.C.; an Apulian loutrophoros, a tall vessel used to carry water, from the fourth century B.C.; and an Etruscan relief, the university said.

The psykter, attributed to the so-called Kleophrades Painter, and the loutrophoros, attributed to the legendary Darius Painter, will remain at the museum for four years as part of a research program in which both the Italian government and the museum will take part, the university said.

“What’s unique about this agreement is that it is calibrated to favor cultural exchanges,” Mr. Fiorilli said. “It’s the right accord for a university. We hope both sides will profit from it.” Princeton students will also be given access to excavations at archaeological sites in Italy to carry out research.

Susan Taylor, director of the Princeton museum, said the agreement supported the museum’s research and educational mission and allowed it to “have unprecedented access, on a long-term loan basis, to additional material” from Italy. The museum will receive loans of “works of art of great significance and cultural importance,” the statement said.

The Princeton deal is the fourth that Italy has reached since last year with an American museum. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles agreed to return 40 pieces to Italy in August, and accords were brokered last year with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

They are a coda to an aggressive campaign that Italy has waged in recent years to reclaim works of art that it asserts were clandestinely looted from Italian soil and smuggled abroad. Negotiations continue with private collectors of antiquities in the United States, as well as museums in Europe.

By . . Elisabetta Povoledo