Tom Mashberg, The New York Times Journalist Profile

Articles

Art Seizures at the Met Caused Concern. His Job Is to Address It.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Graham Bowley |Tom Mashberg

From his office on the top floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lucian Simmons has a vantage point from which to survey the huge mission he has undertaken. Below him in gallery after gallery are the artworks and artifacts that the museum has collected across its 155 years in business. Formerly, as head of the restitution department at Sotheby's, Simmons confronted questions about the histories of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of works a year that the auction house sought to sell.
Museum Agrees to Return Prized, Looted Bronze to Turkey

2 months ago | nytimes.com | Tom Mashberg |Graham Bowley

Towering bronzes depicting emperors once graced an ancient shrine in a region of what is now Turkey that was once part of Rome's extended empire. I nstalled between around A.D. 50 and 250 to venerate imperial power, the statues were later buried by earthquakes only to be discovered and quietly sold by local farmers in the 1960s. They ended up in museums and antiquities collections around the world.
These Twin Marvels of Art Conservation Are Now Seen as Looted Works

Oct 14, 2024 | nytimes.com | Graham Bowley |Tom Mashberg

Their restoration has been embraced as a remarkable testament to the skill of art conservators who identified disparate, ancient pottery fragments and used them to recreate the treasures of antiquity. The Metropolitan Museum of Art rebuilt two classical Greek drinking cups from random shards that arrived at the Met in small batches from a variety of sources over a period of more than 15 years, beginning in 1978.
Después de años de buscar, Camboya festeja el regreso de sus “dioses”

Oct 10, 2024 | clarin.com | Tom Mashberg

Entre las esculturas de piedra de demonios hindúes, guardianes de templos mitológicos y divinidades budistas, las autoridades camboyanas reconocieron este mes el éxito de largos años de esfuerzos de repatriación con una ceremonia en la oficina del primer ministro en Phnom Penh. En una sala repleta de piezas antiguas, los funcionarios dieron la bienvenida formal a la devolución de estatuas y otros objetos robados de lugares donde el pueblo jemer, siglos atrás, había honrado a sus reyes y deidades.
Collector Sues to Block Investigators From Seizing Roman Bronze

Sep 3, 2024 | nytimes.com | Graham Bowley |Tom Mashberg

A California collector has gone to court to block efforts by New York investigators to seize an ancient Roman bronze statue that they assert was looted from Turkey in the 1960s. In a federal court filing last week in California, lawyers for the collector, Aaron Mendelsohn, 74, disputed the evidence they said investigators had presented indicating that the ancient statue of a man was stolen from an archaeological site in Turkey.
After Years of Searching, Cambodia Celebrates the Return of Its 'Gods'

Aug 30, 2024 | nytimes.com | Tom Mashberg

Image After years of research and diplomacy, Cambodian officials, aided at times by U.S. investigators, convinced museums and wealthy collectors in 15 countries that the artifacts in their galleries and homes had been taken illegally, often from remote jungle sites. All told, since 2012, more than 200 relics have been repatriated. Credit Credit...
Heirs of Jews Who Fled the Nazis Return Art to Heirs Whose Family Could Not

Jul 26, 2024 | nytimes.com | Tom Mashberg

"Seated Nude Woman," a drawing by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, was returned on Friday to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish art collector and Viennese cabaret performer who was killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Cleveland Museum of Art to Return a Rare Ancient Icon to Libya

May 30, 2024 | nytimes.com | Tom Mashberg

While excavating an ancient Greek palace in eastern Libya in the 1930s, an archaeologist dug up a large earthen storage jar, looked inside and spotted something unexpected - a 2,200-year-old sculpture of a bearded man carved from basalt, a dark volcanic stone. The two-foot-tall antiquity, most likely chiseled during ancient Egypt's Ptolemaic Dynasty, was a rare find. Known as a striding male figure, it is one of only 33 statues like it known to exist, Egyptologists say.
Who Owns a Drawing That May Be Nazi Loot? A Judge Will Decide.

May 9, 2024 | iverifyu.com | Colin Moynihan |Tom Mashberg

A drawing Egon Schiele made of his wife is the focus of a dispute among a Lehman foundation and heirs of two Jewish art collectors. In 1964, Robert Owen Lehman Sr., a philanthropist and art collector who led the Lehman Brothers investment firm through the Great Depression, bought a small drawing by the Austrian artist Egon Schiele.
Getty Museum Agrees to Return Ancient Bronze Head to Turkey

Apr 24, 2024 | nytimes.com | Tom Mashberg

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles on Wednesday said it was returning an ancient bronze head to Turkey that it had purchased in 1971 from an antiquities dealer who sold other items to museums that were later found to have been looted. The museum said the decision was made "in light of new information" provided by the Manhattan district attorney's office, which asserts that the object was stolen in the 1960s from a heavily plundered Roman-era settlement in Turkey known as Bubon.