Met returns dozens of ancient artifacts amid trafficking crackdown

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Manhattan prosecutors kept pushing ancient objects out of New York as the value of Met-linked looted artifacts climbed past $95 million. In June, the Manhattan district attorney’s office secured the return of dozens of ancient artifacts after a process the museum described as collaborative.

The June returns fit a broader pattern of repatriation tied to trafficking probes. On June 10, the Met sent two works back to Cambodia, an Angkor period stone Guardian Deity and a sandstone lintel with a Dragon in Foliage, after new information surfaced through the district attorney’s ongoing investigation into art dealer Doris Weiner. Max Hollein said the museum’s Cultural Property Initiative had expanded provenance research and added dedicated researchers, signaling a more aggressive internal review of holdings even as outside investigators kept uncovering problematic objects.

That initiative has become central to the Met’s public defense of its collecting practices, but the largest returns still came through law-enforcement pressure. On April 28, Alvin L. Bragg, Jr. announced the return of 657 antiquities valued at nearly $14 million to India, with prosecutors tying the haul to criminal trafficking networks involving Subhash Kapoor and Nancy Wiener. The Manhattan district attorney’s office said those pieces were recovered through ongoing investigations, and the handover underscored how much of the cleanup is still being driven by seizures and restitution demands rather than by acquisition checks at the museum itself.

The pattern points to a museum system still repairing damage from years of weak provenance controls. The Met now says it is committed to responsible collection stewardship, but the cases linked to Cambodia and India show how looted objects moved through New York’s art market, entered major institutions, and were only returned after prosecutors assembled enough evidence to force the issue. The running total of Met-linked looted artifacts now exceeds $95 million, a measure of both the scale of the trafficking networks and the long tail of institutional failures that allowed them in.