This sculpture was almost certainly stolen from an ancient Maya site, yet its sale is scheduled to proceed in broad daylight.
French President Emmanuel Macron last year called for looted African artworks housed in France to be returned to the home countries from which they had been stolen. Now, he might want to add Maya art of the Americas to the lengthy list deserving restitution.
David Stuart is professor of Mesoamerican art at the University of Texas at Austin and director of the Mesoamerican Center there and of the school’s academic research center in Antigua, Guatemala. “Piedras Negras was one of the great Maya sites with a remarkable sculpture tradition, thanks to the good limestone found in the region,” he said in a telephone interview. “The fragment shows a portion of the amazing headdress worn by the king.
Although it is unknown how Stendahl came across it, the sculpture is one of at least two from the looted site that were then in his possession. In 1964 Stendahl lent a second Piedras Negras stela, dedicated to the same Maya king, to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the museum bought the carved sculptural relief four years later.
Formally, Yates is a lecturer in antiquities trafficking and art crime at the university’s School of Social and Political Sciences. In an email she pointed to a 1947 Guatemalan law, Decree 425, that made it illegal to modify or move Maya monuments and prohibited their export. Romain Beot of Millon’s pre-Columbian department and Serge Reynes, a pre-Columbian specialist with the firm Origine Expert engaged to examine items in the sale, did not respond to The Times’ email inquiries.
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