The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) in Ohio is suing the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office over the ownership of an ancient bronze statue valued at $20 million (£16.5 million). Government officials seized the impressive piece in August following allegations that it had been looted from Turkey. 

Dated to around AD 180-200, the strikingly headless statue is believed to depict the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) as a philosopher wearing a toga-like garment. CMA’s website added that it had most likely originated from “Turkey, Bubon(?) (in Lycia)”. But recently, the statue’s public information now states that the “identity of the figure represented remains unknown” with a wider attribution of “Roman or possibly Greek Hellenistic” heritage. 

Concerns were first raised about the statue’s provenance in 2009 by the Turkish government. After requesting information about the statue, they officially claimed in 2012 that it was a looted artefact from the south-western city of Bubon. During the 1960s, the ancient site of Bubon was plagued with local looters who secretly sold a number of newly discovered bronze statues to antiquities traffickers. One of the fourteen missing statues portrayed Marcus Aurelius.  

Arousing further suspicion, the Marcus Aurelius statue was once owned by the Boston art dealer Charles Lipson, who had acquired it alongside four other spectacular bronzes in 1967, not long after the Bubon looting had occurred.  

Last August, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office rendered the work “seized in place” for the duration of the current investigation. But CMA’s lawsuit alleges that the Manhattan’s District Attorney Alvin Bragg has provided “insufficient” evidence to prove the statue is stolen property. They claim that several scholars have also cast “significant doubt” over its previous attribution to Marcus Aurelius due to the missing head. It seeks a judge to declare the museum as the rightful owner of the statue.  

The lawsuit continues to state that the museum “does not question that the New York district attorney sometimes gets it right and returns true stolen items to foreign nations. Based on the evidence adduced thus far and the opinions of experts available to the museum, this is not one of those times.” 

In a statement, the Manhattan’s District Attorney Office is said to be “reviewing the museum’s filing in this matter and will respond in court papers.” They added “the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has successfully recovered more than 4,600 illegally trafficked antiquities from numerous individuals and institutions.”