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Return of Roman Bust to Italy

I spend a great deal of my academic research, writing, and lecturing focused on the illicit market for looted antiquities. What often shocks me is the lack of due diligence by private buyers, and sometimes even public institutions. What’s more, insufficient diligence often reflects the lack of good faith on the part of the buyer. And even more than that, it’s shocking that buyers proceed with their purchases when common sense considerations suggest that a purchase is imprudent. Case in point: collectors who continue purchasing items from art dealers with poor reputations and histories of legal improprieties.

I understand that errors are made, misinformation is circulated on the market, and the art trade is difficult to navigate. However, there are a few names that continue appearing in the press due to unethical practices. One of those names is Phoenix Ancient Art. I’m not the first to note the gallery’s missteps. The art dealers have been scrutinized by journalists, art historians, writers, and attorneys. I first wrote about the dealers in 2009 in this short paper. The text mentions the gallery’s connection to famous antiquities looter, Giacomo Medici. It also discusses criminal charges against Ali Aboutaam after dealing in looted objects from Egypt, including the Ka Nefer Nefer mask that the Phoenix Ancient Art sold to the St. Louis Art Museum. (The mask was properly excavated in Egypt in 1955, but subsequently went missing for decades.)
The gallery faced a civil legal matter when they attempted to sell a Roman torso to the Kimbell Art Museum in 2001. Then Hicham Aboutaam faced a misdemeanor charge after making false claims on a customs declaration in 2003 after smuggling an Iranian rhyton into the US. Rather than correctly stating its origin as Iranian (or Persian), he claimed that it originated from Syria. Yet, the gallery owners have been involved in other legal disputes since then. In 2014, the art gallery was in possession of a looted Roman sarcophagus lid smuggled out of Italy and sold to convicted antiquities trafficker Gianfranco Becchina. The Aboutaams exhibited the piece at the Park Avenue Armory in 2013, and it was eventually seized by US authorities and returned to Italy the following year.
Then yesterday, it was announced that the Cleveland Museum of Art returned a Roman bust acquired from Phoenix Ancient Art. It was proven that the marble was looted from an archaeological museum in Sessa Aurunca, in southern Italy, during World War II. Researchers and academics, such as David Gill, had objected to the museum’s acquisition at the time of its announcement. Yet this wasn’t the brothers’ first sale of suspicious property to the Cleveland Museum. In 2004, Phoenix Ancient Art sold a statue to the museum believed to be by Praxiteles. The provenance of the piece is so suspect that other museums won’t display the piece on loan, although it is one of the few known surviving pieces by the artist.  Perhaps that statue will one day be restituted.