Ashraf Omar Eldarir has recieved a six month prison sentence in US Federal court. 

ARCA has written a lot about Eldarir, a naturalised U.S. citizen from Brooklyn.   The first time was back in 2022 after he was indicted in the United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, on two counts of smuggling, under Title 18 U.S. Code § 545, 2 and 3551 et seq. after he flew into John F. Kennedy International Airport on from an international flight from Egypt with three suitcases filled from top to bottom with illicit antiquities wrapped in protective packaging.

In our second article we published an open source list of many of the Egyptian artefacts actively in circulation on the US and European markets which were traceable to Eldarir, reminding buyers that Caveat Emptor, if the name on the collecting history of their Egyptian artefacts included any of these names or combinations of stories they were likely to be looted.

⇏ Ashraf Omar Eldarir (see our earlier post today).

⇏ Anything with any spelling that says something like ex-private Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir collection; ex-Salahaddin Sirmali collection.

⇏ Anything with "formerly Collection Salah al-Din Sarmali Bey. Acquired by Izz al-Din Tah al-Darir Bey in Egypt.

In our third story, we examined how the insatiable U.S. demand for Egyptian antiquities between 2012 until 2020, and the ease with which illicit pieces could be laundered into the licit market and resold, often for substantial sums—created fertile ground for smugglers like Mr. Eldarir.  We also expanded our growing list of his identifiable imports and published an example of one of his forged provenance letters, and raised the obvious elephant-in-the-room question: catching one man with 590 artefacts in his suitcases is one thing, but what about the 'don’t ask, don’t tell' dealers and auction houses who eagerly absorbed his material into the supply chain? Eldarir’s scheme relied on fabricated attestation letters and never once produced an export license or verifiable proof of ownership, yet the ancient art market had welcomed his goods all the same.

In February 2025 we reported that after a prolonged federal court case, Eldarir had finally elected to do what most federally charged individuals tend to (eventually) do.  Knowing he stood a snowball's chance in hell of being found not guilty, the former doctor-turned-smuggler pleaded out, admitting that he had smuggled ancient Egyptian artefacts into the United States over a series of trips to and from his home country.  In theory, for his role in these affairs, US sentencing guidelines estimated that he could serve as many as three to five years behind bars and might even face denaturalisation, which could send him back to the very country that he so prolifically robbed.

ARCA continued to ask what happened to these two high value pieces sold through Christie's to a dealer in Switzerland. 

One was this portrait head of a man, sold first through Christies New York in 2012 for $52,500.  Despite the trafficker's arrest in the US, this piece was still up for sale during the COVID-affected TEFAF Maastricht art fair in 2020, at the stand of Swiss dealer, Jean David Cahn.  Here the piece was called "a Portrait Head of the Emperor Severus Alexander" with a price on request. 

On Monday, the internet lit up after Algemeen Dagblad published an explosive investigation by Peter Schouten, John van den Oetelaar, and Cyril Rosman, revealing the identification of two World War II-era paintings linked to the family of Friedrich Gustav Kadgien, sparking renewed attention to Nazi-looted art hidden abroad.  Kadgien, a Nazi SS officer, served as Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s liaison with Swiss banks in his work connected with Germany's Vierjahresplan before splitting for Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay as Germany lost the war.

Friedrich Kadgien's visa for Uruguay.

Building on this revelation, ARCA released its own article yesterday, outlining some of our parallel research into the tragic losses of Amsterdam dealer Jacques Goudstikker, as well as tracing a brief outline of Kadgien’s movements before and after his escape to South America.  As the case remained a developing one, we discussed only the general outlines of our own OSINT and SOCMINT explorations,  in order to give Kadgien's relatives time to respond. 

Today, journalists Schouten and Rosman reported that federal prosecutor Carlos Martínez has opened a case of concealment of smuggling, in cooperation with INTERPOL and the Policía Federal Argentina. As a result of this investigation law enforcement officers from Mar del Plata's Special Investigations Unit executed a search warrant, authorised by the Mar del Plata Court of Guarantees No. 2, which was carried out at a home in Mar del Plata in search of the 17th century painting Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, looted during World War II.  Kadgien 's youngest daughter, accompanied by her husband and lawyer, were present during the search.

During the police raid, investigators discovered that the family had removed the artwork, leaving its current whereabouts unknown.  Where it had hung on the wall, a tapestry with a horse had been hung.  Despite this, more than 25 prints from German and French collections from the 1940s were seized, along with relevant documentation, two cell phones, a revolver, and a shotgun.

This painting, by Italian artist Giuseppe Ghislandi, was stolen from Jacques Goudstikker's collection when the Jewish Dutch art dealer fled the Netherlands as it was invaded by Nazi Germany

This case got underway after the artwork depicting Cecilia Colleoni had been discovered in a photograph uploaded for a Robles Casas & Campos real estate advertisement.  The image depicted the 17th century countess behind a green couch next to a wooden and glass tile coffee table, which unfortunately, by mistake or design, forms the shape of a swastika, an ancient religious symbol, adopted by Adolf Hitler to represent the German Reich

The Nazi used the right facing form of a swastika at an angle of 45 degrees with the corners pointing upwards.

Shortly after the news broke in Europe this week, Robles Casas & Campos removed the photos and changed the Mar del Plata housing listing to another property in barrio Parque Luro located 5 km away. Reviewing documents for Argentine companies listed as Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada ARCA found that the original Buenos Aires home, located at Padre Cardiel 4152, Mar del Plata, was owned, and/or occupied, by Kadgien's younger daughter, Patricia Mónica Kadgien and her partner Juan Carlos Cortegoso.  

As the story gained steam within the international press, Patricia Kadgien, who had already stopped communicating with the Dutch journalists, switched all of her social media channels private, as did other relatives and former employees of the family.  As an added precaution, Kadgien, also changed her online name from Patricia Kadgien to Monica Cortegoso.  

But before these changes were made, ARCA had already captured a series of photos posted by the former SS officer's daughter, which were of two additional artworks. 

One was described by the Dutch journalists as a still life painting depicting a crowded display of peaches and other fruit, a bird's nest, insects and a lizard.  This oil painting is believed to have been completed by the German artist Abraham Mignon (1640–1679), and was also being searched for as a World War II era loss by the Dutch Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed. 

ARCA captured a grouping of images of this artwork posted on Kadgien's socials in 2011, which showed what is believed to be the Mignon painting displayed behind three individuals.  While the wall-mounted light illuminating the painting from above causes the artwork to be out of focus, we could clearly see three peaches poking through. 

Still life painting by Abraham Mignon which was known to have been purchased by Friedrich Gustav Kadgien, a lawyer responsible for foreign currency procurement through Swiss front companies for the Vierjahresplan.

Discovered 3rd painting in a rental residence advertised by Kadgien's daughter.

Two of the original images ARCA captured from a 2019 posting before the take-downs occurred, showed the exterior of this property.  One of these corresponds to a newer December 2023 photo uploaded by Kadgien's daughter which depicts the same house, showing a portion of the same veranda and the same white table. 

This third artwork can also be seen in this local Ahora Mar del Plata news site photo, showing that it was seized along with other suspect works when the search warrant was executed.  This painting and these other works on paper, will now need to be sifted through, though we can already see that some of the prints appear to be part of the Henri Matisse. Seize peintures 1939-1943, a First Edition set of 16 Prints

Published by Les Editions du Chene in Paris in 1943. 

For now, the Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi has not been recovered.  Nor, it seems, has the other high value still life by Abraham Mignon.  One has to hope that Patricia, her husband, her sister Alicia Maria Kadgien or other members of the family, will cooperate more with police and prosecutors than they did with the journalists covering this evolving and long time coming story. 

For our preceding article on this case see this link. 

By Lynda Albertson and Alice Bientinesi

By: Camilla Brunazzo Chiavegato

Museum curators play a key role in legitimising looted or stolen artefacts. They act not only as individuals, but also as professional representatives of the museums to which they are legally, ethically and deontologically tied. But while their actions and  activities are not usually considered criminal, apart from when it involves insider theft, museum representatives are worth examining through the lens of criminological theories. 

As a means of example, the Grosz v. Museum of Modern Art  (2009 - 2011) case and the Nazi-era provenance of the three works involved – Self-Portrait with a Model   (1928), Republican Automations (Republikansche Automaten) (1920) and The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse  (1927) by George Grosz [Fig. 1] – allow us to reflect on the problematic collection practices of the founding director (1929-1943) and then director of collections (1947-1968) of the Museum of Modern Art, Alfred H. Barr Jr.  

Figure 1. Transfers of property of the three works of art by George Grosz (Self-Portrait with a Model, 1928; Republican Automations, 1920; Poet Max Hermann-Neisse, 1927) protagonist of the legal case Grosz v. MoMA

Barr: Was he a‘Good Faith’ or a ‘Bad Faith’ Purchaser?

In the context of Nazi-era spoliations, US lawyer Raymond Dowd has defined ‘bad faith’ purchasers as “thieves, accomplices of thieves and receivers of stolen property [that] have received massive financial benefits at the expense of a murdered population despoiled not only of their property, but of their culture as embodied in the artworks torn from them.” 

Figure 2. Nazi propaganda against Jewish Bolshevism and on the dangers posed by the 'untermenschen'. Alfred Flechtheim’s face was used as the quintessential example of the regime’s enemy, undated (Robert Hunt Library).

At the trial of Grosz v. MoMA, the plaintiff avoided defining Barr outright as a buyer acting in bad faith, despite the fact, as we will illustrate below, that this museum director was well aware of the opportunities (and controversies) occurring on the global art market during his tenure at the museum. And yet he still chose to authorise the purchase of suspect artworks for the New York museum, previously classified by the Nazi Party as “Degenerate Art.” 

In this case, the source who first circulated German artist George Grosz’s “degenerate” works of French modernism and German expressionism was a Jewish art dealer named Alfred Flechtheim, who was forced to liquidate his galleries in Berlin and Düsseldorf “under duress” – a factor that is legally difficult to prove. What is known is that Flechtheim was refused the compulsory membership of the Reichskammer der bildenden Künste because of his Jewish background, which amounted to a ban on his business after Adolf Hitler was appointed as chancellor on 30 January 1933. He was also subjected to a stream of anti-Semitic propaganda against the dangers brought about “Jewish Bolshevism.” [Fig. 2] as well as the later the Nazi-organized traveling exhibition of so-called “degenerate” art in 1937.

Figure 3. Klein-er Portrait Max Hermann (mit cognac flasche) by George Grosz on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the most problematic of MoMA’s three acquisitions: The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse (1927). In 1928, Grosz consigned the portrait of his close friend from his 1920s period in Berlin to Alfred Flechtheim as “Klein-er Portrait Max Hermann (mit cognac flasche),” following an agreement that recognised the Jewish dealer as his exclusive sales representative. [Fig. 3].  It is insufficiently clear if this painting had been consigned to the dealer solely for sale, or if the proceeds for the sale of said painting, had Flechtheim sold the work, been earmarked for the repayment of the debt the artist had with his dealer. 

How did The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse make its way into the Museum of Modern Art’s collection?

To follow the circulation of Grosz’s painting it is useful to read correspondence between Barr and the emigrated German art dealers Charlotte Weidler and Curt Valentin, both of whom were conduits established in the US that helped peddle purged “degenerate” artworks in America.  Letters exchanged between Weidler and Barr, and Barr's correspondence with Valentin and other colleagues, provide us with unique insights into these individuals actions when it comes to the sale and purchase of suspect works. 

Figure 4. Charlotte Weidler’s passport photo from 1931.

As one of the first institutions in the US (founded in 1929) solely dedicated to the exhibition of modern art, the MoMA was rapidly expanding, and Barr maintained a relationship with Weidler. She was a German art historian and critic of North European contemporary art, who since 1924, had served as an advisor to Homer Saint-Gaudens, the director of the Carnegie Museum regarding German artists whose work might be selected for its annual international exhibitions.  [Fig. 4]. In addition to this Weidler is documented as having profited from the sale of artworks entrusted to her during the Nazi era, including pieces belonging to the Jewish art historian Paul Westheim, who fled Germany under persecution. After Westheim’s exile, Weidler claimed to have safeguarded his collection but instead sold works without his consent,  pocketing the proceeds. 

While Weidler played a pivotal role in introducing major works of German Expressionism to the United States, her professional dealings remain deeply controversial. Archival evidence shows that she profited from the displacement and loss suffered by others in the art world, particularly émigré collectors and dealers forced into exile from Germany. Her involvement with some of these collections has drawn scrutiny as emblematic of both wartime and postwar exploitation. Yet, her picture remains complicated: some scholars who have studied her correspondence describe her as a fervent anti-Nazi, highlighting the tension between her personal views and her self-serving actions and transactions.

On 5 February 1950, writing to Barr, on stationery from the Carnegie Institute, Weidler discussed her plans to travel to Europe to visit artists’ studios, hoping to acquire works that might appeal to the museum director. In this same letter, she informed Barr that “I have been lucky that some of my collection in Germany for instance an oil painting by Klee, works by Barlach, Nolde, Kokoschka, a strong, early George Grosz which once has belonged to the Kronprinzen Palais and has been ousted by Hitler [Grosz’s Poet], and drawings by Lehmbruck could be saved and have partly arrived in New York already.”

Figure 5. Curt Valentin in Berlin, 1936 (photo by Alfred Hentzen)

After Barr’s initial refusal, on 10 April 1952, the art dealer Curt Valentin later wrote to Weidler that he had managed to sell her painting, The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse to Barr for the New York museum for $850, despite the painting being damaged and requiring conservation treatment.  [Fig. 5].  

In that correspondence, Valentin writes:

“Dear Charlotte: 

We sold the painting “Portrait of Max Hermann-Neisse” by George Grosz for $850 to the Museum of Modern Art. However it seems the picture is in a very bad condition, and Mr. Barr told me the repairing cost would amount to $75, which he would like to deduct from the cost price.  I agreed to this, and I hope you will still let me have $100 profit, in which case I shall credit your account with $675. ”

At the time of the painting’s acquisition by MoMA, Alfred Barr made no effort to investigate its prior ownership or trace its path through the art market. Nor did he attempt to reach out to the work’s original creator, George Grosz, who had fled Nazi Germany for New York in 1933 and was in a position to clarify its provenance. Grosz could have confirmed the painting’s original consignment to dealer Alfred Flechtheim, or even overseen the restoration work referenced in Barr’s correspondence with Curt Valentin. Instead, Barr bypassed both avenues, opting to proceed with the purchase without further inquiry or explanation, leaving critical questions of provenance unaddressed.

Valentin, Not your run of the mill New York gallerist.  

Fig. 6. Curt Valentin’s Nazi Reich Chamber of Fine Arts Sales Authorisation.

On 14 November 1936 the Nazi Reich Chamber of Fine Arts gave a written authorisation to Curt Valentin, Alfred Flechtheim’s former assistant, to:

"… make use of your connections with the German art circle and thereby establish supplementary export opportunities, if [this is done] outside Germany. Once you are in a foreign country, you are free to purchase works by German artists in Germany and make use of them in America.” [translated from original]. 

This authorisation effectively made Valentin an out of country agent of the Nazi government during his time in New York. [Fig. 6].  Likewise, the sale of The Poet Max Hermann-Neisse (1927) by George Grosz was not his only sales transaction with the MoMA, nor the singular controversial one.

Fig. 7. Cover of the Gallery Fischer Auction Catalogue (June 30, 1939).

Valentin was a sales intermediary for the MoMA on 30 June 1939, when the Theodor Fischer Gallery in Lucerne, Switzerland organised an auction entitled “Paintings and Sculptures by Modern Masters from German Museums” during which 125 major confiscated works were put up for sale the proceeds from which were to be paid into a foreign currency account in London, available for the ‘German Reich’. [Fig. 7]. 

While many dealers boycotted this sale of appropriated works, refusing to finance the Nazi war machine, Valentin was less restrained.  He attended the auction purchasing on behalf of the Buchholz Gallery in New York and at the behest of Alfred Barr, to bid on paintings to be purchased with funds from donors of the museum.

Valentin bid on works of art that the Nazis had purged from German public museums under the 1938 law on “degenerate” art, and obtained the winning bid on five works: Andre Derain’s “Valley of the Lot at Vers,” stolen from the Cologne Museum; E. L. Kirchner’s “Street Scene” and Wilhelm Lehmbruck’s “Kneeling Woman,” both taken from the Berlin National Gallery; Paul Klee’s “Around the Fish,” pilfered from the Dresden Gallery, and Henri Matisse’s “Blue Window,” seized from the Essen Museum.

Figure 8. Cover of the catalogue for the MoMA exhibition “Art in Our Time”, 1939.

Two days after the extremely distasteful event, Barr’s correspondence from Paris, addressed to the museum’s executive director, Thomas Dabney Mabry, demonstrates that both museum employees were fully aware of the problematic consignor of the artworks being sold in Switzerland.  Barr himself, cowardly writes his colleague saying: “I am just as glad not to have the museum’s name or my own associated with the auction” while suggesting that the staff at the MoMA should frame their new acquisitions as distanced from the Lucerne auction: “state that they have been purchased from the Buchholz Gallery, New York.” The outcome, all five purchased works were exhibited in MoMA’s 1939 summer “Art in Our Time” exhibition, with no mention to their problematic circulation. Instead the works were credited to Valentin’s New York gallery and listed as anonymous loans.  [Fig. 8] 

The bridge between Weidler and museum director Barr was thus Curt Valentin who worked first for Galerie Flechtheim and later for Karl Buchholz. 

Buchholz was one of the four German dealers authorised by the Nazi Party's Reichskammer der bildenden kunste to sell “degenerate” art abroad to finance the regime. From 1937 to 1951, Valentin represented the Buchholz Gallery in its US venue in New York, where he sold art authorised by the German government for disposal. Valentin was also one of the preferred channels for acquiring avant-garde masterpieces for the fledgling MoMA and Barr recommended Valentin when he asked for the U.S. citizenship in 1942. 

Barr’s Ethical and Legal Constraints 

Barr’s unsavory purchase activities, made possible by his position of authority, can be analysed in terms of the professional standards of the time. The only ethical guidelines available during his tenure were contained in the vague Code of Ethics for Museum Workers, published by the American Association of Museums in 1925.

In the spirit of the American society of the 1920s, that document aimed to instil ethical behaviour and relations in workers at different levels of the museum’s hierarchy (staff-director, director-board of trustees). It is worth emphasising that the stated function of museums at this point in history was to hold their collections in trust “for mankind” and at the service of human life, based on the “three-fold ethical basis” of devotion, faith, and honour. 

The section “Business Dealings” deplored embezzlement by employees and highlighted the role of directors who, in the name of their responsibility and authority, should balance trustees, employees, and the public image of the institution while, somehow contradictorily, amassing a “representative collection.” However, “representative collections” should guarantee an interpretive context for individual objects in the museum setting, typical of colonial universal museums. 

Regarding the legal handling of Nazi-looted property on an international horizon, the Inter-Allied Declaration Against Acts of Dispossession Committed in Territories Under Enemy Occupation or Control (London Declaration, 1943) was issued to “combat and defeat the plundering by the enemy Powers of the territories which have been overrun or brought under enemy control” and nullify and reverse the property expropriated by Germans in occupied territories. The signers (the Allies and the French National Committee) appealed to the citizens of neutral countries to fight against the seemingly legal methods of expropriation that was being perpetrated by the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, Japan). 

In addition, specifically in the United States, works classified as stolen property would have also fallen under the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA, 1948), Sec. 2315 Sale or receipt of stolen goods, securities, moneys, or fraudulent State tax stamps. 

Figure 9. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Pablo Picasso, Jacqueline Roque, and Margaret Scolari Barr at Picasso’s home, “La Californie,” in Cannes, France, July 1956 (Alfred H. Barr, Jr. Papers, 12.II.M. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photo: James Thrall Soby).

Sixty-one years ago today, on a hot summer morning, the fishing trawler Ferruccio Ferri, worked the waters off the coast of Fano, and accidentally hauled in an extraordinary and controversial catch.  Tangled in the vessel's nets was a magnificent bronze statue of a young athlete.  One which only later would be attributed by scholars to the great Greek sculptor Lysippos.  

Encased in barnacles yet still gleaming with history, the Victorious Youth had rested for millennia on the shallow Adriatic seabed, his whereabouts unknown until a fishing net tore him from obscurity. That single, chance, encounter would serve to ignite one of the longest and most fiercely contested restitution battles in modern cultural heritage law.  And from the moment he surfaced, the fate of Italy’s bronze became the stuff of cultural crime legend. 

His odyssey, from his first appearance on the fishing docks of Fano, through bathtubs and cabbage patches, and into the hands of smugglers, restorers, and art dealers, took years of painstaking investigation to unravel. By the time he arrived, scrubbed of incriminating barnacles, on the polished marble floors of the Getty Villa, his journey had already drawn the full attention of Italy’s police and cemented the Atleta di Fano as the nation’s most contentious and emblematic case in Italy's global fight to reclaim looted antiquities.

Maurizio Fiorilli, the country's formidable prosecutor and one of the most respected cultural heritage lawyers of his generation, devoted his life to the long and often uphill battle to see the Atleta di Fano returned to Italy.  His passing this week leaves a profound void in the country's fight for cultural justice, but the attorneys who are following in his footsteps are carrying his case forward with the same resolve, unwilling to let his work, or Italy’s claim, fade.  

Fierce in the courtroom yet meticulous in his reasoning, Fiorilli spent decades untangling legal knots, gathering evidence, and navigating the diplomatic minefields that inevitably surrounded this high-value restitution case before retiring and passing the fight to the next generation. In his 2020 book Il Caso dell’Atleta Vittorioso (The Case of the Victorious Athlete), published by Edizioni Efesto, he documented the bronze’s twisting journey and the court’s ruling in precise detail, preserving for posterity not only the established facts of the case but also the Italian judiciary’s reasoning. The result is an enduring and accurate account of one of Italy’s most contentious cultural property battles.

In 2018, Italy achieved a milestone victory when its Supreme Court (Corte di Cassazione) affirmed what Fiorilli and his successor Lorenzo d'Ascia had long maintained—that the Atleta di Fano was Italian property and had been illegally exported. The ruling upheld the decision of Magistrate Giacomo Gasparini, whose decisive 46-page ordinance had already ordered the statue’s immediate seizure and restitution, unequivocally affirming that the bronze is the inalienable property of the Italian state and restoring the confiscation order previously issued in February 2010.  

With the Court of Cassation's ruling verdict, the legal pathway was clear. The John Paul Getty Museum, it seemed, would have no choice but to comply.

And yet, sixty-one years to the day after his discovery, the Atleta di Fano remains in Malibu, a centerpiece in the Getty Villa’s collection. Over the passing decades, the museum has continued to stubbornly defend its possession, steadfastly resisting Italy’s legal claims and sidestepping the mounting body of evidence that points to the statue’s illicit removal. 

Despite definitive court rulings affirming the nation’s ownership and repeated calls for his repatriation, the Getty has stubbornly held firm, clinging to its incorrect narrative while ignoring the clear and compelling evidence which concretises the statue's theft. The result is a stalemate that has stretched on for decades, emblematic of the wider struggle over cultural property and the unwillingness of some institutions to right historical wrongs.

In a 2018 statement, Ron Hartwig The Getty Trust's Vice President of Communications called Italy’s Supreme Court ruling “disappointing,” vowing that the museum would “continue to defend our legal right to the statue.”  He further insisted that “the facts in this case do not warrant restitution of the object to Italy,” claiming that “accidental discovery by Italian citizens does not make the statue an Italian object.” 

Such statements sidestep Magistrate Giacomo Gasparini’s detailed and well-reasoned judgment of 8 June 2018, which fully endorsed earlier rulings from the Court of Pesaro acknowledging the statue’s illicit export. The judge grounded his decision in clear violations of Articles 666, 667, and 676 of the Italian Criminal Code, as well as Article 174, paragraph 3 of Legislative Decree No. 42/2004 and Article 301 of Presidential Decree No. 15/1972. He concluded that the Atleta di Fano had been illegally exported and that the Getty’s later acquisition did not qualify it as a “holder unrelated to the offense.” 

The Court of Cassation upheld this reasoning, rejecting the Getty Museum’s appeal and declaring the confiscation final—a decision further validated by the European Court for Human Rights. 

Despite the ECHR decision, the Getty maintained its stance, asserting that the “Getty’s nearly fifty-year public possession of an artwork that was neither created by an Italian artist nor found within the Italian territory is appropriate, ethical and consistent with American and international law”  invoking arguments that run counter to both the letter of the law and contemporary museum thought on what constitutes the spirit of cultural stewardship. 

Given this unbroken chain of rulings at every judicial level, in both Italian and European jurisdictions, one must ask: what is gained by prolonging the dispute? 

The Getty’s continued refusal to comply transforms a settled matter of law into an exercise in obstruction, undermining not only the authority of Italy’s judiciary but also the credibility of international cultural property agreements, not to mention the Getty's own stance on responsibility taking when it comes to problematic pieces purchased for their collections. 

Each year of inaction sends the message that legal victories in the restitution of looted art can be neutralised by institutional intransigence—a dangerous precedent for such an important museum and a disservice to the principles the Getty itself claims it strives to uphold.

Meanwhile, the city of Fano waits for the Atleta, not just an Italian treasure; but as part of the city's shared cultural patrimony. 

Objects like this ancient statue do not belong behind the walls of intransigent institutions that ignore court orders.  They belong within the landscapes and cultural narratives from which they came. For Italians this bronze is more than bronze—it is a tangible embodiment of the ancient Greek world which once vibrantly stretched along the shores of their country and shaped a population.  He is the embodiment of Le Marche's multicultural identity, and a story rooted in the soil and sea of the people of the Adriatic coast.

Fiorilli understood this better than anyone. His career was defined by victories that returned looted masterpieces to their rightful homes, from ancient vases and silver hoards to entire archives of stolen books. But for him the Atleta di Fano was different. It was this case that crystallised the need for perseverance in the face of deep-pocketed resistance.  It was also proof that the legal fight for cultural reparations is not a matter of months or years—it is a multi generational struggle which must be passed on.

As we mark the sixty-first anniversary of the athlete's discovery, and as we mourn the loss of one of Italy’s most brilliant legal minds, we must also confront the uncomfortable truth: justice delayed is justice denied. To honour Maurizio Fiorilli’s work, the call must be clear, loud, and unrelenting: the Victorious Youth must come home. 

Every day it remains in California is a day that injustice is prolonged—and a day the J. Paul Getty falls short of the reparations it owes to history.

By:  Lynda Albertson