Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Repatriates 44 Artifacts Following New York Inquiry

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond has announced it has repatriated 44 ancient artifacts deriving from Italy, Egypt, and Turkey, following an inquiry led by New York State and federal officials overseeing legal claims related to cultural property ownership.

New York authorities will facilitate the respective return of the objects to government officials of their origin countries, the museum said in a statement. The works include a bronze statue of an Etruscan warrior dated from the 5th Century B.C.E., a terracotta Italian wine flask from 330 B.C.E. and an ancient Egyptian cosmetics vessel.

Alex Nyerges, the museum’s Director and CEO emphasized that VMFA’s leadership “fully supports” the repatriation decision. In a statement, a museum representative said that no evidence linked current employees to unlawful activity related to the initial acquisition of the 44 returned objects, which it stated, entered the museum’s collection between the 1970s and 1990s.

In May, officials of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the Department of Homeland Security, began an inquiry into 28 objects suspected of having being looted or improperly removed from their countries of origin from the Virginia museum’s 50,000-item collection, requesting documentation related to their ownership records.

In a statement, the museum said that following the May inquiry it provided “extensive” records related to the objects’ provenance histories and acquisitions to federal and state officials. In June, officials expanded the initial inquiry to include a total of 61 works, the museum said. The investigation extended to mid-October, when authorities presented “irrefutable” evidence indicating that more than half of the objects had been looted, stolen or displaced, the museum stated.

The move follows a widening push for Western museums to fill provenance gaps for objects sold and donated in previous decades, a period when standards around the sales of antiquities housed in private collections were far laxer.

The Virginia museum has repatriated only six works of art since 2004, including three objects with links to the Indigenous North American Tlingit tribe that were returned under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.