Playing the odds on looting

AFTER three decades of resistance, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art agreed this month to return a prized ancient Greek vase to Italian ownership, and officials in Italy are negotiating with the J. Paul Getty Museum over at least 42 antiquities in the Getty’s collection that Italian authorities believe were looted.

But Mimi Gaudieri, executive director of the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, says these rather embarrassing cases did not trigger the organization’s recently released survey on American art museum purchases of antiquities. “This is basically an ongoing subject that we follow,” she says, citing the organization’s previous study of the subject, released in 2004.

Still, given the current spotlight on museums’ antiquities acquisitions, Gaudieri acknowledges the welcome news of one of the study’s conclusions: Of the global annual trade in antiquities -- between $100 million and $4 billion -- American art museum purchases represent less than 10%.

Does this mean that U.S. museums are more than 90% less likely to be purchasing looted antiquities than other buyers? Gaudieri will say only that observers who are convinced that American museum galleries are filled with looted antiquities should take a second look. “It’s reassuring that we are a very small part of the overall market,” she says.

Diane Haithman