Word: krater
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Seen as a group of objects, "Patterns of Collection" is nothing less than superb. Some of the works in it have already been harried to the edge of cliche by publicity-the Euphronios krater, the Velásquez Juan de Pareja. But the Met is above all an encyclopedia. Its 18 departments cover virtually every kind of art ever created. So there is a great deal in the show that will be unfamiliar to even the most assiduous Metropolitan goer, and the general level is high. One would have to travel a long way east of New York to find...
...originally pirated by foreign powers or smuggled out. Today the countries of the world officially operate on more elevated principles-but art thievery thrives as never before. It is a multimillion-dollar business that gets amphetamine shots from events like the Met's $ 1,000,000 calyx krater purchase. Tragically, it is also leading to the wholesale destruction of archaeological treasures, and occasionally murder along with theft...
...saying about the Met's million-dollar Greek vase (TIME, March 5), John D. Cooney, curator of ancient art at the prestigious Cleveland Museum, had his own outspoken opinions. Were the Metropolitan Museum and Thomas Having in the wrong to pick up the 2,500-year-old krater that may have been bootlegged out of Italy? "Ninety-five percent of ancient art material in this country has been smuggled in," Cooney said. "If the museums began to send back all the smuggled material to their countries of origin, the museum walls would be bare." Back at the Met, Curator...
...London." Offered earlier and more willingly, that evidence might have settled things. But by now charges and countercharges were shooting back and forth across the Atlantic. Reporters were pursuing Hecht, Sarrafian, Met Director Thomas Moving and a restorer in Zurich named Fritz Buerki, who had expertly repaired the calyx krater for Hecht...
Reporters who reached Sarrafian, 68, found him a little vague. "My interest is in coins," he said in Beirut. "I care little for vases." He had really paid little attention to the calyx krater. The pieces had been in a hatbox from 1926, when his father died, until 1970, when he consigned the box to Hecht. There were some odd discrepancies in his story. The Met had said that Hecht only got an agent's 10% of the price. Sarrafian suggested otherwise. The Met said the vase had no missing parts. Sarrafian said there were pieces missing, some...