Results for “restitution”
The Gurlitt Hoard
A routine tax inquiry uncovered some 1,500 artworks hidden in a Munich apartment — many looted or sold under duress during the Nazi era. The discovery reignited the global reckoning over restitution.
The Euphronios Krater Returned to Italy
In 1972 the Metropolitan Museum of Art paid a record $1 million for a dazzling sixth-century BC Greek vase painted by Euphronios. Decades later it was proven to have been looted from an Etruscan tomb near Cerveteri — and in 2008 the Met returned it to Italy.
The Medici Archive Investigation
In 1995, investigators raided a warehouse in the Geneva Freeport and uncovered the archive of dealer Giacomo Medici — thousands of Polaroids of freshly looted objects that became a Rosetta Stone for the antiquities trade and drove restitutions from museums around the world.
The Getty Museum Repatriation Cases
The J. Paul Getty Museum, the wealthiest art institution in the world, was forced to return around 40 looted antiquities to Italy and Greece after investigators traced them to illicit excavations — and to put its own curator on trial.
Switzerland Returns the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria
Looted by a British punitive expedition in 1897 and scattered across Western museums, the Benin Bronzes have become the defining test of colonial-era restitution — with Switzerland and others now returning them to Nigeria.
France Returns Looted Syrian Antiquities
As Syria's civil war fuelled a flood of looted antiquities onto the market, France intercepted and returned a group of trafficked objects — part of a wider fight against the 'blood antiquities' financing conflict.
Cornelius Gurlitt
The reclusive son of Nazi-era art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, Cornelius kept a hoard of some 1,500 works — many looted or sold under duress during the Third Reich — hidden in his Munich apartment. Their discovery in 2012 reopened thousands of restitution questions.
