Shelby White Collection

Shelby White Collection

A sweeping criminal investigation of Manhattan antiquities collector Shelby White concluded in April 2023 with the seizure of eighty nine antiquities that had been looted from ten different countries and were collectively valued at nearly USD $69,000,000. No criminal charges were filed.

Seventy one of the objects were seized from White's Manhattan apartment, while an additional eighteen were seized from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they were on loan from White's collection. White has been a longtime trustee of the Met and sits on the museum's acquisition advisory committee.

White and her husband, the hedge fund pioneer Leon Levy, built up an immense antiquities collection over the decades, including more than seven hundred objects. They often bought recently looted antiquities from known traffickers with few questions asked, court records show. This included many of the most valuable objects of ancient Greek and Roman art to surface on the market over the past half century, making their collection one of the most prominent – and controversial – in the world.

While aggressively buying looted antiquities, White was also a prominent donor to art historical and archaeological projects. She and her late husband donated USD $20,000,000 to the Met, which named its refurbished gallery for Greek and Roman art after the couple. The two were also generous funders of archaeological digs in Israel, an institute for the study of ancient art at NYU and other philanthropic causes.

Despite the couple's deep engagement with archaeology, their private collection was repeatedly criticized for being filled with objects that had been recently looted. Questions first emerged during the couple's “Glories of the Past” exhibition at the Met in 1990, which led to the publication of many of the collection's most prized objects for the first time. In 1993, the couple returned the Icklingham Bronzes after evidence emerged they had been looted from a field in the UK.

In 2004, White agreed to return a marble torso called the Weary Herakles after its lower half was discovered in Turkey. And in 2008, White was forced to return ten objects to Italy and two to Greece after they were tied to antiquities trafficking networks.

As new evidence of these ties continued to emerge, federal agents raided her Sutton Place apartment in July 2021 in search of looted objects and related records. It was the first in a series of searches that became the foundation for a criminal investigation of one of the United States' wealthiest and most prominent antiquities collectors.

The sweeping investigation concluded in April 2023, when the Manhattan DA's office seized the eighty-nine antiquities looted from ten different countries. No criminal charges were filed against White.

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Various

Various

Leon Levy

Shelby White

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Various

Damien Huffer

Jason Felch

Jason Felch