Met trustee and philanthropist has 89 looted ancient artefacts worth $69MILLION seized

• Shelby White, 84, is an emeritus trustee and advisor at the Met – but 89 objects from her personal collection of ancient artefacts have been seized
• While there is no suggestion that White or her late husband knowingly bought the stolen artefacts, the probe has called into question her links with the Met

A millionaire New York philanthropic antiquities collector has had nearly 100 stolen items, worth over $69million, confiscated from her home and museum collection. 

Shelby White, 84, is an emeritus trustee and advisor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – but 89 objects from her personal ancient artefacts collection have been seized in the last two years because they were deemed stolen.

The criminal investigation probed White’s vast bank of antiquities – and the DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit seized multiple centuries-old objects that were originally robbed from 10 different countries. 

Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is now in the midst of the repatriation process to bring the looted items back to their original lands – including Yemen, Iraq, Greece, China and Italy. 

While there is no suggestion that White or her late husband knowingly bought the stolen artefacts, the probe has called into question the collector’s links with the Met. 

A total of 71 of the items were found in White’s own home ‘museum’ – her sprawling Manhattan apartment that she shared with her late husband, Wall Street investment hotshot Leon Levy.  

The artefacts were on shown off in cabinets and nooks in the wall, fit with their own lighting to compliment the centuries-old objects.  

Other artefacts – which hold significant cultural and historical importance – were loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Shelby White, and therefore seized from gallery’s archives. 

Levy and White are known within the art and antiques world for their philanthropy, and the couple gave the Met $20 million to renovate its Roman and Greek Galleries, which were subsequently named after them in 2007.

The couple amassed a personal collection of 700 items from the ancient world. 

They even had an entire exhibition at the Met named after them, ‘Glories of the Past: Ancient Art from the Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection’ in 1990. 

White has also won multiple accolades and awards for far-reaching philanthropic work. But the recent criminal probe and seizures have allegedly soured her reputation.

One collection of objects which were seized from the Met this March was the Neolithic Family Group.

The objects, which date to 5000-3500 BCE and are valued at $3 million, compromises five human and animal figures carved from marble.

Investigators found out and was looted from the island of Euboea by a Greek trafficker who smuggled the pieces into Switzerland. 

Then in 1982, dealer-trafficker Nicolas Koutoulakis sold the group to Leon Levy and Shelby White. 

White loaned the group to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2000, where they remained on display until March of this year, the DA’s office said. 

Another artefact seized from White’s home in April 2022 was ‘Bronze Bust of a Man,’ dated to the first century BCE. The sculpture is valued at $3 million.

It’s since been returned to Italy, where it was looted from.  

Investigators also found an ancient bronze statue of the Roman emperor Lucius Verus at Shelby White’s Manhattan home. 

It was valued at $15 million and had been stolen from Turkey, the authorities said. 

Another object, which the investigation concluded belonged to Turkey, was one of four sections of an Anatolian sarcophagus.

The relief is dated to 170-180 AD, and was part of Shelby White’s collection until the seizure. 

The most recent repatriation was on May 22 this year, when a Sumerian alabaster bull – which belonged to White but was taken from the ancient city of Uruk – was returned to Iraq. 

Earlier that month, a pair of seventh-century stone carvings valued at $3.5 million were returned to China. They were loaned to the Met in 1998 by White, and sat in storage for 25 years. 

District Attorney Bragg said: ‘It is a shame that these two incredible antiquities were stolen and at least one remained largely hidden from the public view for nearly three decades. 

‘While their total value is more than $3 million, the incredible detail and beauty of these pieces can never be truly captured by a price tag.’ 

Returning three alabaster and silver objects, worth $725,000, to Yemen after being found in White’s collection, Bragg said: ‘Our investigation into the collector Shelby White has allowed dozens of antiquities that were ripped from their countries of origin to finally return home. 

‘These are just three of nearly 1,000 antiquities we have repatriated over the past 16 months, thanks to the talent of our investigators and prosecutors, along with our outstanding partners at HSI.’ 

Matthew Bogdanos, the head of the district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, filed a statement with the New York State Supreme Court saying that White fully cooperated with the investigation, which ended in February.

The DA’s office did not uncover evidence to warrant charging White with ‘any criminal activity in connection with the purchase and possession of the antiquities.’ 

Philippe de Montebello, the Met’s former director, told the NYT: ‘Shelby White is a scholar who bought antiquities in good faith out of a real love and knowledge of the art.

‘And, most importantly, she did not put them away for her sole enjoyment but shared them with a wide public, lending generously to exhibitions worldwide and displaying the core of her collection in a solo show at the Met.’

Others within the industry have slammed White for her supposed carelessness. 

Elizabeth Marlowe, the director of the museum studies program at Colgate University, said: ‘There is no way that someone at her level of the market and her depth of collecting and her prominence at the Met, there is no way someone at that level did not know they should be asking for things like export licenses.’ 

Patty Gerstenblith, an expert on cultural heritage issues and a professor at DePaul University College of Law, said: ‘Her collecting practices do not fit the model of how a museum should be pursuing knowledge and preserving the historical record.

‘I don’t think the good works, the support of archaeological work, outweigh the harm that she caused.’

The Met has also been scrutinized for not paying close enough attention to the objects which were lent or donated by White – despite many of her items having to be returned to Italy and Greece in 2008. 

White’s lawyer Peter A. Chavkin told the New York Times that her objects had been acquired ‘in good faith, at public auction and from dealers they believed to be reputable.

‘If an item in her collection was shown to have been wrongfully taken by others, Ms. White has expeditiously and voluntarily returned it to its rightful place of origin.’