Michael Steinhardt – Serial Stolen Antiquities Collector: the earliest chapter.

While researching the Neolithic Face Masks from Palestine (see here), I came across the rather unsavoury character Michael Steinhardt. Before his retirement, he was a Wall Street Hedge Fund manager, who amassed a $1.1 billion fortune by 2018.

He was also an international collector of antiquities and philanthropist, he has a gallery named after him at the MET in New York. Nothing wrong with that you might say. Well there wouldn’t be, if the antiquities Steinhardt bought and sold were legally obtained in their countries of origin.

However, it turns out that many of the estimated 1550 pieces he has acquired since the 1990’s are stolen!

The first case I could dig up goes back to 1995. In 1992, Steinhardt bought a Sicilian golden bowl made in 450 BC from art dealer Robert Haber for $1 million.

Sicilian libation bowl or phiale. Looted from Himera. Himera was one of the most important of the Greek settlements in Sicily. The Greeks established the city in 648 BC. However the expansion of Greek territory did not go uncontested. It saw two major battles, one in 480 and one in 409 BC, both against the Carthaginians. They won the first battle but lost the second and the city was destroyed. Many priceless objects were thus buried and recovered by local diggers to be sold on the World’s clandestine antiquities market. The gold phiale was one of the earliest objects recovered from Michael Steinhardt in 1995. Photo credit: Archaeology.org (1998)

Adapted from the Inf.news website (2022): “Although the purchase process looks legal, Steinhardt knows the hidden risks, because the golden bowl has never appeared on the formal market. Italy is one of the countries with the strictest protection of cultural relics in the world. In order to avoid being noticed by them, Steinhardt deliberately instructed his agent, Haber to complete the transaction in Lugano, Switzerland. Haber then flew from Zurich to Geneva and then to New York. In the customs declaration, he also said that it was a Swiss antique, not mentioning Italy. But this small 12-inch pure gold wine bowl made him love it more and more. He couldn't help exhibiting this bowl in a mansion in Manhattan, which attracted the attention of the government.

In 1995, the U.S. government discovered that the Golden Bowl was an antique that had been lost in Italy for centuries, and confiscated it. Steinhardt also went to court for the first time because of the purchase of cultural relics. His defense is the same as this year, saying that he “has no knowledge” and he really thought it was something from Switzerland. But the judge said that from his constant detours, he knew very well that this was an Italian antique, so he was not an "innocent and ignorant buyer."

The journey of the phiale from initial looting to Steinhardt’s New York home is a convoluted one. As McFadden (1997), explains: “the phiale was unearthed near Caltavuturo, Sicily, apparently in the late 1970's. After it was authenticated by experts, it went through the hands of several art and antiques collectors in the 1980's for sums as low as $20,000. In 1991, it was bought by William Veres, a Swiss art dealer, for $90,000. Further details of the early trafficking of the phiale are given by Archaeology.org (1998): “Somewhere between 1976 and 1980 golden phial (libation bowl) 4^th century B.C.E., decorated with acorns, beech nuts, bees, appeared in the collection of a certain Sicilian named Vincenzo Pappalardo. In 1980, Pappalardo traded it with Vincenzo Cammarata, a Sicilian numismatist and merchant, for works of art worth $ 20000 . In 1991, Cammarat exchanged it with a Hungarian émigré, numismatist and merchant William Veres for works of art worth $ 90000 .

Mc Fadden (1997) goes on “Mr. Veres called it to the attention of Mr. Haber, who went to Sicily to see it in November 1991. Later, Mr. Steinhardt, who had previously bought 20 to 30 art objects from Mr. Haber for $4 million to $6 million, agreed to buy it for more than $1 million, plus a commission to Mr. Haber of $162,364.

Court papers said Mr. Haber went to Zurich, travelled across the Alps and took possession of the phiale from Mr. Veres at Lugano. He then returned to New York through Switzerland, taking what the court called ''great effort to insure that the phiale was not exported directly from Italy.

Mr. Steinhardt, who took possession in January 1992, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art authenticated the platter as a virtual twin of the one it owned. The phiale, a 12-inch shallow libation bowl, is of hammered gold with intricately worked rows of acorns, beechnuts, bees and lotuses. On its edge is an inscription in a Doric dialect spoken in the Greek colonies of Sicily. Steinhardt, ostentatiously kept the phiale on display at his Manhattan apartment until Nov. 9, 1995, when customs agents with a warrant entered and seized it, touching off the court fight.”

Inf.news (2022) again: “The court sentenced Steinhardt to lose ownership of the Golden Bowl and returned it to the Italian government. But [the opportunity for further] punishment was gone, and Steinhardt still went his own way, buying a lot of cultural relics of suspicious origin from antique dealers, and then selling them.”

The phiale was returned it to Sicily in 2000 by the American authorities, why they didn’t investigate Steinhardt, further, at this point, remains a mystery.

References

Archaeology.org (1998). The Looting of Italy. The Golden Phiale Case. At: http://ancientrome.ru/archaeol/article.htm?a=24

Inf.news (2022). American billionaire resells stolen cultural relics, and is now forced to hand over 180 pieces worth 70 million US dollars. Inf.news at: https://inf.news/en/world/effcbacb30e88c92cd6b837d61e9f2fe.html

McFadden, R. D. (1997). Judge Rules Ancient Sicilian Golden Bowl Was Illegally Imported. New York Times. At: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/18/nyregion/judge-rules-ancient-sicilian-golden-bowl-was-illegally imported.html#:~:text=In%20an%20odyssey%20reminiscent%20of,a%20Federal%20judge%20has%20ruled.