Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Repatriates 2,500-Year-Old Treasures to Turkey

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond has returned 41 terracotta relief fragments valued around $400,000 to Turkey after an investigation led by the Antiquities Trafficking Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. The works, acquired by the VMFA in the 1970s, were found to have been illegally taken from a Phrygian temple dating back to the 6th century B.C.E.The museum purchased 34 of the reliefs from Summa Galleries in Beverly Hills, California, in 1978, and the