To Sue or Not to Sue?: The Cleveland Art Museum’s $20 Million Case Against the Manhattan D.A.

“To sue or not to sue? That is the question.”

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Even though I may have spoiled the original meaning of Shakespeare’s famous Hamlet line to the chagrin of all Shakespeare devotees, this is a question that permeates the world of restitutions, antiquities, and looting on a daily basis. Is it nobler to return a work of art that has evidence of looting and/or trafficking, or to argue with the federal government about a work’s “rightful” home and ownership? 

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In the case of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), it’s the latter. In August 2023, a New York judge ordered the seizure of a Late Republican/Imperial Roman bronze sculpture after evidence revealed that the statue had been looted from Turkey, following a larger investigation into a group of antiquities that were trafficked and brought to New York. Apparently, the issue first made international headlines in 2012, when the Turkish government inquired into the statue’s provenance—a work’s earliest known history—and “launched an international campaign aimed at repatriating such works.” Turkey sent a list of 22 objects in the CMA’s collection, ranging from a 3rd millennium BC Statuette of a Woman to a 15th century Bookbinding for the Quran, to reporter Jason Felch.

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Statuette of a Woman from the 3rd millennium BC, one of 22 works of art in the CMA’s collection that Turkey requests to be repatriated. (Image: Jason Felch on Scribd)

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But it wasn’t just the CMA. Various news outlets reported that big names in the museum world, such as The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection were all on the list of museums that, according to the Turkish government, looted and illegally exported from their soils. They have also inquired into various international museums as well, such as the Louvre, Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A)—which has since had a whole slew of other issues with repatriation and looting—Lisbon’s Gulbenkian Museum, and Denmark’s Davids Samling Museum. In a 2016 statement to The Economist, Turkish director general of Cultural Assets and Museums for the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Murat Süslü, emphasized that “we always try to find a diplomatic way to solve our problems and try not to pursue a legal action…but sure, [legal action] is always an alternative.” 

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The opening page of the CMA’s complaint. (Image: WKYC.com)

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Thus, after the seizure was ordered in August 2023, the CMA contested Manhattan District Attorney (DA) Alvin Bragg’s seizure-in-place of the Roman bronze statue in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court's Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division two months later. In a 19-page-long complaint, the CMA claims that they are the “rightful owner” of the statue, known as “Draped Male Figure” in the lawsuit, and that Bragg and his office have “fallen short of persuasive proof” that the statue is indeed stolen, calling the evidence “insufficient” and “inconsistent.” In the complaint, the CMA lists the history of the statue, from its acquisition in 1986 from Edward H. Merrin for $1.85 million, to its publication and exhibition in various museums and publications from Turkey to Boston’s MFA. Clearly, as the document shows, the Cleveland Museum of Art will not go down without a fight.

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This lawsuit, especially as the CMA has “in the past transferred voluntarily antiquities to foreign countries without the intervention of any state or United States authority”, prompts questions about what some may deem the debilitating effects of restitutions and repatriations on museums. Steven Litt from Cleveland.com, writes that “if the Cleveland museum lost some or all of the items on Turkey’s list, it would seriously hurt its collections of ancient Roman, early Christian, and Islamic art.” Knowing that the majority of items in museums, including some Benin Bronzes in Brown’s very own Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, have indeed been looted from their countries of origin, what might this mean for collections of culture as a whole? Questions like these have prompted museums to “change their acquisition policies and form collaboration agreements that allow for loans to replace acquisitions of suspect material,” as Jason Felch from the L.A. Times reported.

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Author’s image of Digital Benin’s record of stolen objects in museums around the world. (Image: Digitalbenin.org)

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In her article on restitutions, Dr. Senta German from Khan Academy lists out the various arguments for and against restitutions. For countries, like Turkey, who demand their cultural heritage back, the arguments are mostly presented as “it is morally correct, and reflects basic property laws, that stolen or looted property should be returned to its rightful owner” and “even if objects were originally acquired legally, our attitudes about the ownership of cultural property have changed and collections should reflect these contemporary attitudes.” On the other hand, for the institutions and families who reject these arguments, their claims are as follows: “Most objects in museums and collections, at the time of their acquisition, were legally obtained and therefore have no reason to be repatriated,” “Source countries do not have adequate facilities or personnel (because of poverty and/or armed conflict) to receive repatriated materials so objects are safer where they are now,” and “Universal museums enable a lot of art from a lot of different places to be seen by a lot of people easily. This reflects our modern globalist or cosmopolitan outlook.”

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The information plaque for the CMA’s Draped Male Figure statue that was listed on their website (left) versus how it's listed now (right). (Image: The Art Newspaper)

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In response to the CMA’s claim that, at the time of the “Draped Male Figure’s” sale to the museum, Merrin was the “lawful owner” and had “good right to sell” the statue that was “free from all encumbrances,” let’s think of an example that might help clarify this rather roundabout argument. If a piece of clothing was stolen from a store and then legally sold on eBay or any other online platform to a buyer with the guarantee that the seller has the right to sell and the clothing item is free from all encumbrances, does the item still count as being stolen? If you said yes, then congrats! We’ve found a simple solution to the entire problem of restitutions. If you said no, then does your reasoning stem from the fact that the stolen clothing item was legally sold again? Or that the terms of the agreement between seller and buyer give absolute ownership over the item? How can we even determine who is the rightful owner of the stolen good?

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As Felch wrote, it’s clear that the question of “rightful ownership,” when it comes to looted cultural heritage and property, is a slippery slope that lawyers, scholars, museum directors, and the general public have tried their hardest to avoid over the years. While the moralist in each of us wants to hold every party somewhat responsible for the problem, if our perspectives shift, then the museums’ reasons for aggressively halting the return of “their” artifacts become clear. 

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Take, for example, the restitution case between the Lindemanns and The Kingdom of Cambodia. While we could impart equal blame on each of the 4 parties involved in the case—the Khmer Rouge for launching political instability, Douglas Latchford for taking advantage of and benefitting from the tumult, the Met for their laziness in not checking the provenance, and the Lindemann’s for their cultural ignorance—it’s now easy to see that the issue is not as clear cut as we believe it to be.

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The CMA’s entrance, with Rodin’s The Thinker. (Image: Cleveland Scene)

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Nevertheless, cases like these are why museums are, in some capacity, losing their prestige as “keepers of the world’s culture” in the art world. In their complaint, the CMA refers to themselves as a “top museum” because they display more than 61,000 objects from around the world. But what is the cost of such a title? The displacement of the world’s culture and heritage for the advantage of greedy art collectors? Is a museum’s conception of “best” or “greatest” only related to the number of famous works they own? What does that mean for smaller museums whose collections aren’t as “great”? When did the experience of a museum stop being the relationship between educator and learner and become the number of objects they can boast about in their collections? 

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While it doesn’t seem the CMA is going to back down any time soon, this brings up questions about the lasting effects of restitutions in an era of repatriation. As Litt writes, “if museums around the world were forced to return ancient objects to modern countries occupying the territories of long-gone empires, it could result in a grand reshuffling of art collections along strictly nationalistic lines.” Obviously, the direct strategy of restitution and repatriation must take a more concrete form, as world leaders and other institutions, like Emmanuel Macron’s pledge to return African artifacts in 2017 and the MET’s new policing program for looted art, find the loopholes in their agreements and continuously emerge unscathed. 

“For the benefit of all the people forever,” reads the CMA’s motto. But who is “all the people”? How long is “forever”? Though the museum credits itself as being a space of “open dialogue and a richly varied, inclusive cultural experience,” this statement doesn’t seem to hold with their relationship with Turkey and the U.S. federal government. In cases like these, there is only so far one can go with the “we bought it, so it’s ours” argument. Let’s hope that the CMA can set aside their differences with Turkey and the DA and embody their vision as a “place to explore history and creativity, a venue for the exchange of ideas, and an institution where neighbors can celebrate their differences and reflect on their shared humanity” once and for all.

(Cover Image: The headless Roman-era bronze statue, ca. 150 BCE-200 CE, the center of the Museum’s lawsuit, via Cleveland.com)