Stolen artifact's long journey ends with return to Olympia Museum

An ancient bronze griffin's head, stolen from the Archaeological Museum of ancient Olympia in the 1930s, was officially returned on March 21, almost a month after being repatriated to Greece from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met).

The 7th-century BC artifact, which had been missing for decades, was handed over to the museum in Olympia during a special ceremony, according to Greek media. 

The event was attended by Greece’s Culture Minister, Lina Mendoni, who expressed the significance of the occasion, calling it "a special day for ancient Olympia, as well as for the Ministry of Culture."

“After a decades-long absence, the griffin returned from New York’s Metropolitan Museum to its natural place, the archaeological museum, in ancient Olympia,” Mendoni said.

The return of the griffin head began on February 24 when it was officially repatriated to Greece during a ceremony in New York. During that event, Mendoni formally received the artifact and its legal title from Met Director Max Hollein. As part of the agreement, the griffin head will be loaned back to The Met for a planned exhibition in late 2026.

Mendoni emphasized that the repatriation was particularly notable because it was not the result of a formal restitution request from Greek authorities. Instead, it stemmed from a 2018 initiative by The Met to investigate the artifact’s origins.

Sean Hemingway, Curator in Charge of Greek and Roman Art at The Met, underscored the importance of the griffin head in his remarks, noting that while there are many archaic bronze griffin heads from cauldrons, "this one is among the largest and finest that still exists."

The griffin’s head was first discovered in Olympia, Peloponnese, in 1914 and was later acquired by the Joseph Brummer Gallery in 1936 from an Athens dealer. In 1972, it was bequeathed to The Met by financier, art collector, and former trustee Walter C. Baker, who had purchased it from the Brummer Gallery in 1948. The artifact remained on display at The Met, moving to the entrance of the Greek and Roman galleries in 1999. However, research by The Met concluded that the griffin head had likely been illegally removed from the Archaeological Museum of Olympia in the 1930s, although the exact details of the theft remain unclear.

The Greek Ministry of Culture provided documentation explaining that the griffin head was discovered in 1914 by Themistoklis Karachalios, the curator of the local archaeological museum, in the Kaledeos riverbed in Olympia. Although the artifact was stored in the museum’s library, it was never properly documented before it went missing in the 1930s. Both Greek authorities and The Met concluded that the artifact could not have been legally removed from the museum.

A statement from The Met revealed that the research “revealed that the theft of the object occurred under the watch of the head of the Archaeological Museum of Olympia, for which he was referred for criminal prosecution over 80 years ago.”

By Naila Huseynova