CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who seized a headless bronze statue valued at $20 million in August that investigators believe was looted from Turkey.
The lawsuit - filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court's Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division - calls for the CMA to be declared the "rightful owner" of the statue.
The statue in question is referred to by the CMA as "Draped Male Figure," described as "Roman or possibly Greek Hellenistic" and dates from 150 BCE–200 CE. The museum acquired the 76-inch (1.9-meter) statue statue in 1986 from New York's Edward H. Merrin Inc. art gallery for $1.8 million and made it a highlight of its collection of ancient Roman art.
A warrant signed by a judge in Manhattan on Aug. 14 ordered the seizure of the statue as part of an ongoing investigation into a smuggling network involving antiquities looted from Bubon in southwestern Turkey and trafficked through Manhattan. Bragg's office believes the headless statue depicts the Roman emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
The museum says it was contacted by Turkey's consul general in 2009, inquiring about "information and documentation" of 21 objects in its collection, including "Draped Male Figure." The consul general did not provide any specifics in its requests, according to the lawsuit.
“The enduring dispute surrounding this matter has kept him separated from his hometown,” Zeynep Boz of Turkey’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said of the statue in August.
Attorneys for the Cleveland Museum of Art say Bragg has "fallen short" in proving that the statue is a piece of stolen property that belongs to Turkey, calling his evidence "insufficient" and "inconsistent." The museum consulted experts who doubt that the statue is a depiction of Marcus Aurelius and also believe that the statue was never in Bubon, nor in modern-day Turkey.
A spokesman for Bragg said the office is reviewing the lawsuit and “will respond in court papers.” He also noted the office has successfully recovered more than 4,600 illegally traffic antiquities.
Museum spokesman Todd Mesek said it does not discuss ongoing litigation but noted the museum takes provenance issues very seriously.
The Manhattan district attorney's office has worked in recent years to repatriate hundreds of objects looted from countries including Turkey, Greece, Israel and Italy. "Plaintiff (CMA) does not question that the New York District Attorney sometimes gets it right and returns true stolen property to foreign nations," attorneys for the museum wrote in the lawsuit. "Based on the evidence adduced thus far and the opinions of experts available to the museum, this is not one of those times."
You can read the lawsuit below.
Bragg's office also recently seized three artworks believed stolen during the Holocaust from a Jewish art collector and entertainer, one of which was at Oberlin College's Allen Memorial Art Museum.
