One of the world’s most important private collections of Cycladic antiquities is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is part of a novel arrangement that includes recognizing it as belonging to the Greek state.
Put together over nearly 40 years by businessman and philanthropist Leonard N. Stern, the collection features 161 mostly marble stones created thousands of years ago on the Cyclades, a group of islands off the coast of Greece in the Aegean Sea. consists of people and ships in the sea.
As part of the deal, 15 of Stern’s amassed most respected items will be available in early November. Cycladic Museum in Athens. These works and others in the collection will occupy prominent positions in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Greek and Roman galleries for at least his decade from early 2024.
The plan to bring Stern’s collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art was designed to gain Greece’s approval at a time when Greece was aggressively pursuing antiquities it thought should be returned to the country. Stern donated his collection to the Hellenic Ancient Culture Institute. The Hellenic Ancient Culture Institute is a Delaware non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and making artefacts available for display. The Institute is governed by a board of directors, whose chairman and majority of members are appointed by the board. Cycladic Museuma private institution established in 1986 to house the collection Nikolaos and Aikaterini (Dolly) Goulandris It is overseen by the Greek Ministry of Culture.
“This agreement builds on decades of successful partnership between the Greek government and the MET,” said Max Hollein, director of the museum, in a statement. “And we are pleased to play a role in the arrangement to excite and educate visitors and scholars for current and future generations.”
By Monday, almost all of those works — including multiple examples of one of the well-known Cycladic styles — a mouthless, eyeless marble figure standing with arms crossed — will be in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Most of them were stored in wooden crates.
Cycladic works are highly regarded and considered by some experts to represent the origins of Western art. Their smooth, uncomplicated contours inspired artists such as Constantin Brancusi, Amedeo Modigliani, and Picasso to call them “magical objects.”
Stern, chairman and CEO of New York-based privately owned Hart’s Mountain Industries, said when he saw a sample at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he admired what he called “power, simplicity.” said that he fell in love with Cycladic art at a young age. of “magnificent stone carvings”. He began his collection in 1981, gradually amassing a series of artifacts stored in a Fifth Avenue townhouse and displaying them in a room used as the library’s offices.
The collection includes items from the Late Neolithic to the end of the Early Bronze Age, and its size is considered by the Met to be “among the great works of Cycladic art”.
About three years ago, Stern said, he approached Hollein with the idea of exhibiting his collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Several parties, including the Greek government, eventually agreed on a deal meant to allow the items to be displayed publicly while avoiding potential disputes over who owned or controlled them. did.
Greek law claims government ownership of “movable antiquities” dating back to 1453. With the permission of the Minister of Culture, it allows private ownership of these items, but prohibits the acquisition of cultural property suspected of originating from theft, illegal excavation, or other means. illegal activity.
Collecting standards have changed over the last few decades, with individuals and museums paying greater attention to when and how antiquities were removed from their country of origin.
At the same time, law enforcement agencies in the United States and elsewhere are investigating looting of cultural property and human trafficking. and countries including Italy, Egypt and Cambodia demanded the return of the artifacts displayed in the world’s leading museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Greece’s culture minister, Lina Mendoni, said in a September speech that the ministry had no evidence that items from the Stern Collection had been illegally exported.
Still, Stern said he recognized that it would be difficult to fully donate his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, saying, “Unless any of the major museums have the blessings of these nations, they will have their property.” We do not wish to tarnish the reputation of our country by accepting
A key step in the process of bringing Stern’s collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art took place last month when the Greek parliament ratified an agreement between the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Cycladic Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Delaware Institute of Greek Antiquities. rice field.
The agreement, confirmed by The New York Times, states that while allowing the ancient Greeks in Greece to own the collection, “Greek patrimony law stipulates that the Greek state is the sole owner of the collection.” It contains the line that all four agree that there is Cultural Institute.
The complete collection will be exhibited exclusively at the MET for 10 years. Over the next 15 years, some of them will gradually move to Greece, where they will be exhibited in the Cycladic Museum and other museums. Meanwhile, a Greek museum plans to loan a Cycladic work to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“We are very proud to be part of this effort to create new ways of cooperation between museums and to play a role in the ‘consensual return of antiquities’,” said President and Chief Executive Officer of the Museum of Cyclades. I am thinking. Cassandra Marinoprue wrote in the email.
In 2049, the Greek government may agree to loan the collection back to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for up to 25 years. If no such agreement is reached, part of the collection still at the Met will be returned to the Hellenic Ancient Culture Institute and sent to Greece to be exhibited there.
As part of the arrangement to display the collection, Stern has donated to the Onassis Library of the Greco-Roman Ministry an archive room for Greco-Roman art and a place to facilitate the management of the archive and scholarly visits. Both are named after him. .
Stern said he believes the agreement provides a blueprint for other collectors to arrange exhibitions of antiquities in American museums while avoiding conflict with foreign governments.
He added that he was pleased that the group of artifacts he had collected over the decades would remain intact through the agreement.
“Keeping the collection together was important to me,” he said. “Because I knew it could never be replicated.”
Niki Kitsantonis contributed a report from Athens.