ART

As a result of a last-minute appeal, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has another month to respond to Turkish government charges that 255 ancient silver and gold objects in the museum’s collections were illegally excavated and removed from Turkey. The museum insists that the so-called “Lydian hoard” of Grecian period objects was purchased legally in the late 1960s from a reputable New York dealer, now dead. The Turkish government agreed to an appeal for an extension until July 20, a day before the Metropolitan’s deadline for answering the suit, which was filed by the Turkish government in U.S. District Court in Manhattan earlier this year. The museum claims the 1,600-year-old hoard of antiquities is worth millions.