Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced today that New York will return three artifacts valued at $725,000 to the people of Yemen as part of a criminal investigation concerning an art collector in Manhattan. The artifacts include an alabaster (marble) ram from the 5th century B.C., which was looted during the Yemeni Civil War in 1994. The items were seized from the apartment of Shelby White, a member of the board of trustees at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.
Bragg stated that the investigation into White, conducted by Manhattan’s antiquities trafficking unit, "has allowed dozens of artifacts looted from their countries of origin to return home... these are just three pieces out of around 1,000 artifacts we have returned to their homelands over the past sixteen months." The Yemeni artifacts are temporarily displayed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., until Yemeni authorities can safely retrieve them.
