A California collector is battling back against the Manhattan district attorney’s office’s ongoing efforts to crack down on looted antiquities. Aaron Mendelsohn, age 74, has filed a lawsuit against D.A. Alvin Bragg contesting his office’s claims that an ancient Roman statue the collector purchased in 2007 was looted from Turkey in the 1960s.
The bronze sculpture is one of a number of works believed to have been illegally imported from an ancient shrine known as Bubon. The D.A.’s office has been working to restitute those artifacts to Turkey. It has thus far secured the return of objects from 12 institutions.
That includes a bronze head from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and a Septimius Severus statue and bronze head seized from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; as well as a Lucius Verus statue from Met trustee Shelby White.
Turkish law has required reporting archaeological discoveries to the government since 1906, with a permit needed for their export. But when local farmers discovered a shrine featuring nine life-sized works in Bubon in the 1960s, they saw an opportunity for financial gain. They illegally sold many of the works, believed to date from 50 C.E. to 250 C.E., to noted antiquities smuggler and dealer Robert E. Hecht.
Aaron Mendelsohn has owned this ancient bronze statue of a headless male nude since 2007. The Manhattan D.A. contends the work was looted from the Turkish site of Bubon in the 1960s and should be repatriated. Photo courtesy of Aaron Mendelsohn.
Mendelsohn isn’t the only one seeking to block restitution of alleged Bubon artifacts.
The Cleveland Museum of Art filed a lawsuit against the D.A. last October seeking to stop the seizure of a 1,800-year-old bronze statue of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. The D.A. believes the piece, valued at $20 million, was looted from Bubon, but the museum contends there is no proof of the work’s origins, let alone illegal activity. The insitution has owned the piece since 1986.
Mendelsohn’s lawsuit is similarly skeptical of the D.A,’s evidence that his sculpture comes from Bubon—although it promises to return it to Turkey should its theft be proven.
“DANY’s claim of origin rests on inconsistent and incomplete historical records, unreliable testimony from a single witness about an event that happened over 50 years ago, and highly suggestive photo arrays and sequences of various bronze statues shown to that single witness,” lawyer Marcus A. Asner wrote in the lawsuit.
Mendelsohn bought the bronze at New York’s Royal-Athena Galleries for $1.33 million in 2007. An invoice from the gallery filed as an exhibit in the lawsuit noted that the piece was cleared by the Art Loss Register. It also came with a letter noting it was from Bubon written by Cornelius Vermeule, the leading expert on the site and at the time the curator of classical antiquities at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
Asner also argued that because the statue has been in California the last 17 years, the D.A. has no jurisdiction over the case—and that the statute of limitations had expired. The Cleveland case also questions New York’s legal authority. The D.A. contends that it has targeted these looted antiquities because they were trafficked through New York, as part of a smuggling ring based in the city.
According to Mendelsohn’s lawsuit, the D.A. contacted him in late December, explaining that its investigation into looted Bubon antiquities had led to his statue. Less than two weeks later, the D.A. issued a subpoena for Mendelsohn to appear before a grand jury in New York. Instead, he hired a lawyer.
The Manhattan D.A. seized this looted Bubon bronze of the Roman emperor Lucius Verus from the collection of Shelby White and returned it to Turkey. Photo courtesy of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.
By threatening criminal prosecution, the D.A. was trying “to intimidate Mr. Mendelsohn into relinquishing the Bronze Male, without affording Mr. Mendelsohn a legitimate opportunity to fully explore the evidence that DANY claims casts doubt on Mr. Mendelsohn’s ownership,” the lawsuit said.
What’s more, the filing argued, such a restitution case would typically be initiated by the country of Turkey, with a civil trial.
“DANY is seeking to deny Mr. Mendelsohn all of the due process rights and legal processes that would be available to him in a civil replevin suit,” Asner added.
The D.A.’s office declined to comment on the case, other than to offer a statement noting its track record for restitution and promising “we will respond to this filing in court.”
The restitution of looted antiquities that have passed through New York has become a major priority for the D.A.’s office since the establishment of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit in 2017. In the years since, the unit has recovered some 5,800 antiquities valued at over $455 million. As of May, more than 4,600 artifacts had been returned to more than 25 countries.