Looted Art of a Billionaire Still on Display at the Israel Museum | Entertainment

Museums around the world face a closer examination of the provenance or chain of ownership of their works of art, especially those looted in conflict zones or illegally looted from archaeological sites. There are more and more calls for these items to be returned to their country of origin.

Donna Yates, a criminologist specializing in the smuggling of artefacts at Maastricht University, said that several recent scandals involving looted artefacts such as the The return of Cambodian antiques by the Denver Art Museum urge museums to reconsider the ownership history of some of the objects they own.

They can’t really afford the public embarrassment of being constantly tied to this stuff because museums aren’t wealthy and many of them occupy a place of public trust, she said.

In addition to the Heliodorus stele and two of the ancient masks, at least one other artifact belonging to Steinhardt in the Israel Museum is of uncertain provenance: a 2,800-year-old inscription on a black volcanic stone. The museum exhibit indicates that the origin is Moab, an ancient kingdom of present-day Jordan.

How he got to Jerusalem remains unclear.

Steinhardt lent the royal Moabite inscription to the museum in 2002, shortly after purchasing it from an authorized Israeli dealer in Jerusalem, said Amir Ganor, who heads the theft prevention unit of the Antiquities Authority in ‘Israel.

The dealer, who confirmed the deal but spoke on condition of anonymity due to the legal questions surrounding the article, told The Associated Press that he had obtained the registration of a Palestinian colleague in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank by Israel, which did not specify its origin.

I don’t know how it happened to the dealer in Jerusalem, Ganor said. He said it could have come from the West Bank, neighboring Jordan or Dubai, a long-standing antiques hub.

The Israel Museum declined interview requests and refused to show documentation of the artifacts.

But in a statement, he denied committing any wrongdoing, saying he consistently followed applicable regulations when lending works. He said all exhibits are in full cooperation with the Antiquities Authority.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said the Moabite listing was not part of the Steinhardt investigation and declined to discuss the article.

James Snyder, who was director of Israel’s museums from 1997 to 2016, said all artifacts coming to the museum were verified by the IAA before being exhibited, and other works of art looted. de Steinhardt were accompanied by documentation of legal ownership.

We received legal purchase documents, it was approved for a loan, and it was approved to be returned by the authority, Snyder said.

Israel has a legal antiques market managed by some 55 authorized dealers. They are allowed to sell artefacts discovered before 1978, when a law came into effect making all artifacts the property of the state.

This market has provided an outlet for laundering smuggled and looted antiques from all over the Middle East that receive materials produced by merchants in Israel. Israel began to fill this gap in 2016, when it commissioned a digital database of merchant artifacts.

Israel recently returned smuggled antiques found in stores Egypt and Libya. Other antiques stolen from Iraq and Syria, including thousands of Cuneiform tablets purchased by Hobby Lobby owner Steve Green in 2010 were smuggled to Israeli dealers before being sold to collectors with fraudulent documents.

Morag Kersel, professor of archeology at DePaul University in Illinois, said the free looting of archaeological sites across the Middle East was ultimately driven entirely by demand.

The looters do it because there is someone like Steinhardt who is willing to pay money and buy things that come right out of the ground, she said.

Under the deal, the Manhattan District Attorney has seized 180 Steinhardt artifacts and will repatriate them to their respective countries. Steinhardt also agreed to a lifetime ban on acquiring antiques, although it is not known how this ban will be enforced.

Steinhardt, 81, is a long-time patron of the Israel Museum and many other Israeli institutions, including a natural history museum at Tel Aviv University that bears his name. Since 2001, his family foundation has donated more than $ 6.6 million to the Israel Museum, according to partial US tax returns.

Steinhardt was not charged with looting items himself and said he had committed no crime. But the prosecutor’s office said it knew, or should have ascertained through a reasonable investigation, that the antiques had been stolen.

Steinhardt declined an interview request. His office issued a brief statement saying that the Manhattan DA has not challenged Mr. Steinhardts’ right, title or interest in any of the artifacts other than those in the colony.

The DA began investigating Steinhardt’s massive antiques collection in 2017 after loaning a bull’s head sculpture to the Metropolitan Museum of Art that had been looted from a site in Lebanon.

The DA claims that the three objects at the Israel Museum are indeed seized there and has opened talks with Israel to coordinate the return of 28 additional objects. He said Steinhardt was unable to locate the last nine items located in Israel.

Of those 40 artifacts, more than half were allegedly looted from sites in the West Bank, according to court documents. Nine other artifacts from Jordan, many of which were sold to Steinhardt via Israel’s licensed antiques market, are also being repatriated.

Neither the Jordanian government nor the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities responded to requests for comment. Under interim peace accords in the mid-1990s, the fate of items taken from the occupied West Bank must be part of a still elusive peace deal.

The Israel Museum said it only recently learned of the colony’s existence and is currently investigating the matter.

For now, the objects looted in the museum still bear Steinhardt’s name.