A US court has rejected Turkey’s bid to acquire a historic marble statue in an auction.
They sold a 22-centimeter marble statue that has been on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for more than two decades. As part of a looted artifact by the Turkish government, according to the New York Times. However, a US court has recently denied the allegations.
The sculpture was from the years between 4800 and 4100 BC in present-day Turkey. In 2017, the marble historical was definitely on Christie’s auction list. In the same year, the Turkish government invoked the Ottoman government’s 1906 decree that all historical artifacts discovered in the country belong to them and that they should leave the country in any way. It is forbidden to complain to the auctioneer or the owner and declare that the work was there illegally, and they must return it to Turkey.
The statue, called Guennol Stargaze, was previously owned by an art collector named Ulster Bradley Martin, who bought it around the 1960s, and for some time between 1966 and 2007, it was on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
A court in Manhattan did not rule in favor of Turkey on Tuesday. Rejecting Turkey’s request to return the work, the judge noted that although the statue was undoubtedly created in present-day Turkey. There was no legal evidence to confirm that anyone discovered that on Turkish soil after 1906.
Therefore, the issue of trade in this type of works and its transfer to other countries was raised in the past. Also, given that it’s impossible to trace the course of this work over the past thousands of years, it can only be said with certainty that it was first cooled, from New York in 1961. The bottom line, Turkey failed.