According to an announcement by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis museum will return an ancient Greek vase to Italy because it matched a photo that the Italian police had seized in a crucial raid in 1995 on the Swiss warehouse of Giacomo Medici, an antiquities dealer who was being accused of selling looted artworks. He was sentenced to eight years in jail.
Furthermore, the L.A.’s J. Paul Getty Museum chief antiquities curator, Marion True, has been charged by the authorities with conspiring with Medici and American dealer of antiquities to acquire stolen artworks.
A trial began for True after her indictment in 2005, but it was repeatedly halted. Although, the Getty museum had agreed in 2007 to bring back all the disputed works of art.
The Minneapolis Museum, as it had told the Times in 2005 that one of its six ancient vases or kraters, seemed to match a photo seized in the 1995 Medici raid. After making inquiries along with Italian authorities and experts, the museum said that it was obvious that its vase was in fact the one depicted in photos seized from Medici.
Evidence showed that the ancient vase, depicting a procession of Dionysus, the god of wine and his devotees had probably been unearthed in an archaelogical site near Rutigliano in Southern Italy.
The date of the return of the Greek ancient vase has not been made known yet.