Bronze Head of a Griffin

Bronze Head of a Griffin

After 25 years guarding the entrance to the Greek and Roman galleries in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and roughly 90 years after its theft, the Olympia Griffin was voluntarily returned to Greece.

On 24 February 2025, the Met returned the piece to Greece in an official handover attended by Greece's Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, and the Met's Director, Max Hollein. This repatriation occurred after the Met expanded its provenance research team as part of its Cultural Property Initiative, aiming to more proactively examine objects with questionable provenance.

The Bronze Head of a Griffin was originally discovered in the Kaledeos riverbed in 1914 by the supervisor of the Archaeological Museum of Olympia, Th. Karachalios. Before its disappearance in the 1930s, the piece was stored in the museum’s library where it remained un-inventoried. According to the Met’s own archives, Joseph Brummer, a Hungarian-born art dealer based in New York, acquired the head in Athens in 1936 for $25 from an antique dealer, Theodore Zoumpoulakis. It was then sold in 1948 to financier, art collector and Met trustee Walter C. Baker for $27,000, who bequeathed it to the Met in 1972.

After reviewing the records, the Greek Ministry and the Met determined that the Griffin could not have legitimately left the Archaeological Museum of Olympia and agreed to return the piece to Greece. The Met stated that “[t]his 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."

Although the Met finalized its decision to return the Griffin in 2025, discussions about the piece’s provenance had apparently been underway since 2018. Many of the key provenance documents emerge from the Brummer Gallery Records, donated to the Met in 1980. These documents include Brummer’s detailed transaction records for the Griffin. Interestingly, Brummer included an extract from a 1938 article that noted its theft: “the head was no longer to be found in the Museum of Olympia.” A decade after this article was published noting the Griffin’s suspicious disappearance, the piece was sold to Baker.

The Bronze Head of a Griffin was returned to Greece in 2025, but it was only a quick trip. According to an agreement between the Met and the Greek government, the Griffin will be returned on loan to the Met for a special exhibition in 2026.

1

Sculpture – statues, carvings, bronzes, reliefs, figurines

Greek

Joseph Brummer

Walter C. Baker

Metropolitan Museum of Art

1972.118.54

Greece

Emma Cudlipp

Jason Felch