Denver Art Museum repatriates marble sculpture to Turkey

The Denver Art Museum has repatriated a roughly 1,500-year-old marble bust to Turkey, according to Turkish Culture Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy.

Ersoy said in a statement last week that the artifact had been “scientifically confirmed” to have originated from the ancient city of Smyrna in present-day Izmir on the Aegean Sea.

The marble bust was determined to have been discovered in 1934 from the Smyrna Agora excavations, a series of state-sanctioned digs led by Selahattin Kantar—the founding director of the İzmir Archaeology Museum—and Rudolf Naumann, a prominent German archaeologist.

Ersoy said that authorities had determined the sculpture had been illegally removed from the country. Further details about its departure from Turkey and how it came to be in the collection of the Denver Art Museum were not provided.

The Denver Art Museum said in a recent report from its provenance department that the sculpture was returned to Turkey in “late 2025.”

“While some details of the marble head’s journey from the agora to the Denver Art Museum remain unknown, we do know the head was gifted to the DAM in 2005 by the wife of a former foreign service officer who served as Consul General in Istanbul in the 1940s,” the museum said.

“Upon the discovery of new information, the DAM confirmed with Turkish officials that the head was considered missing, and after further research and communication, the marble head was removed from the DAM’s collection and repatriated to its country of origin.”

It is now on display at the İzmir Archaeology Museum, Ersoy said.

“Through collaboration and constructive dialogue with the Denver Art Museum, we have successfully returned the artifact to its rightful home,” Ersoy said. “I would like to thank the teams at the General Directorate of Cultural Assets and Museums, as well as everyone else who contributed to this process.”

The return reflects a broader push by Turkey to identify and recover cultural artifacts taken abroad, with officials emphasizing ongoing efforts to track and reclaim items removed from the country unlawfully.

In March, Turkey completed the repatriation of a group of manuscripts and calligraphic works from Canada, marking what officials described as the first formal return of cultural property from the country.

Those objects were intercepted by Canadian authorities in January 2024 while being transported from Istanbul to Vancouver and were handed over in Ottawa after a legal process finalized by Canada’s Federal Court in September 2025. They have been displayed in Ankara following their return.

In December, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts said it returned 41 ancient polychrome terracotta relief fragments to Turkey after an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. Ersoy also previously said that 180 cultural artifacts were repatriated to the country in 2025.

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