A California antiquities dealer, Aaron Mendelsohn, surrendered a 2,000-year-old bronze statue of a Roman emperor, known as the Nude Emperor, to New York prosecutors. The statue, valued at $1.33 million, was purchased in 2007 from a defunct New York gallery but is believed to have been looted in the late 1960s from a Roman shrine in Bubon, Turkey. In a deal filed in New York Criminal Court, Mendelsohn relinquished claims to the statue without admitting wrongdoing, and prosecutors withdrew an arrest warrant. The statue was repatriated to Turkey in a restitution ceremony on Monday, alongside dozens of other objects, including an $800,000 marble head of Demosthenes seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
This case underscores the ongoing global effort to repatriate looted antiquities, particularly from Turkey, and highlights the role of the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit in recovering stolen cultural heritage. The involvement of major institutions like the Met, which has expanded its provenance research team, signals a shift toward greater accountability in museum collections. The restitution also exposes the network of dealers, forgers, and galleries that facilitated the illicit trade, raising questions about the art market's historical complicity in trafficking looted artifacts.