Italians will press MFA to return art

Italian police will travel to Boston next month aiming to persuade the Museum of Fine Arts to return at least two dozen objects they contend were stolen, the chief of the artistic heritage division of Italy's national police force said yesterday.

Speaking from Rome, Colonel Ferdinando Musella, chief of the Carabinieri Special Unit for the Protection of Artistic Patrimony, said that he would be accompanied by Italian officials and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. He said he has not told the MFA or several other museums he plans to approach that he is coming.

Musella spoke a day after the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York agreed to return 21 artifacts determined to have been looted from Italy.

The planned police visit is part of the Italian government's heightened pursuit of American museums for allegedly buying works illegally excavated from ancient tombs in the 1970s. In November, Italian prosecutors, preparing for the high-profile art smuggling trial in Rome centering on the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, revealed that in a raid they had seized photographs of what they believe are a stolen vase, a jar, and statue later placed in the MFA's collection. They also compiled a list of 29 objects at the MFA they say were looted.

Musella would not detail how many objects are in the dossier he's preparing, but said the total is ''many, many more" than the 29 reported earlier.

The ongoing trial in Rome charges former Getty curator Marion True and art dealer Robert E. Hecht Jr. with being part of an art smuggling ring, which they both deny. In his office, Musella pulled up the MFA's online database on his computer and pointed out the many objects -- 116 pieces, not including coins -- that Hecht sold or gave to the museum over the years. He said he hoped that the MFA would follow the Met's lead.

Among the objects the Met has agreed to return include the Euphronios krater, a Greek vase that former Met director Thomas Hoving has long called ''the hot pot." In exchange, the Met will be given long-term loans of objects of equal worth now in Italy.

''The actions of the Met set the precedent for how all museums, including the MFA, who have acquired stolen art, should respond," Musella said.

MFA director Malcolm Rogers said yesterday that the museum has tried to contact Italian authorities repeatedly since November, when the list and photographs were reported. In a Nov. 7 letter to the Italian Consulate in Boston, Rogers asked for help reaching authorities who could help resolve questions about the MFA's collection. In the letter, Rogers wrote: ''The policy and practice of the MFA is to return any objects that are determined to be stolen to their rightful owners."

Though the MFA has been in touch with Italian officials in the United States, the museum said it has yet to receive from the government a list of any materials that have been reported on and reprinted by the media.

''We would be happy to talk with them at any time," Rogers said of the Italian police. ''The sooner the better. I believe the Italian authorities would say they have new evidence. But that has not been presented to us."

The accusations against the MFA are not new. In 1998, the Globe detailed how the MFA had acquired antiquities over the previous 15 years that had no provenance, or ownership history, a strong indicator that they had been looted.

Alan Shestack, the MFA's director from 1987 to 1994, acknowledged that the museum did not work hard enough to make sure objects were not looted. Rogers has always insisted that he does not know of any stolen work in the MFA's collection.

The Italians were given more ammunition for their claims through a series of raids, in 1995 and 2000, of the properties of Hecht and convicted art smuggler Giacomo Medici. Those raids turned up evidence that Hoving, the former Met director, says is beyond dispute.

In particular, investigators say they found thousands of Polaroid photographs of objects that looters used to document illegal digs in ancient tombs during the 1970s. According to prosecutors, many of the dirt-encrusted objects in the photographs ended up in major museums, including the MFA, after being scrubbed clean and passed through Hecht and Medici without any record of ownership.

''The MFA has no other alternative," Hoving said yesterday. ''The Italians got smoking gun after smoking gun after smoking gun."

DePaul University law professor Patty Gerstenblith, cochairwoman of the American Bar Association's cultural property committee, said museums like the MFA would do well to follow the Met's lead.

''I think the Met got a real sweetheart deal," Gerstenblith said. ''Italy's been very generous. It would be extremely foolish for any of these museums to resist."

She said the Met has been ''dragged, kicking and screaming" to make a deal because of the evidence.

Geoff Edgers reported from Boston; Sofia Celeste reported from Rome. Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.