US collector returns artefacts to Greece

New York. Manhattan-based antiquities collector Shelby White returned two works from her private collection to Greece in July. The Greek Ministry of Culture said these had been illegally excavated and smuggled abroad. The objects are a marble relief fragment and a bronze calyx krater, both from the fourth century BC. They will be displayed at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens before being transferred to museums near their find sites. The marble relief, showing a warrior and a youth, formed the upper part of a grave stele whose lower portion was excavated legally in the 1960s in Porto Rafti east of Athens and today is in the nearby Vravrona Archaeological Museum. The two parts will soon be reunited for the first time. The bronze bowl is believed to be looted from a royal tomb near Pieria in Northern Greece. Ms White, a trustee and major benefactor of the Metropolitan Museum, amassed her collection with her husband, the late financier Leon Levy. In January she returned ten objects to Italy.