Robert McCarthy Jr., a financier and connoisseur of history, has been collecting medieval art since the 1990s, building a significant collection, including a heralded trove of Ethiopian antiquities.
But recently, when he considered transferring 380 artifacts in his holdings to a museum to be studied and exhibited together, he confronted a complication that many collectors face.
Provenance records for most of them were too thin to prove they had been exported legally.
American museums and many others once accepted artifacts with spotty provenance records. But, in the last few decades, attitudes have changed, and institutions now routinely reject so-called orphaned artifacts that do not have detailed paperwork proving they were not looted.
In recent weeks, though, Mr. McCarthy, the Toledo Museum of Art and the government of Ethiopia have devised an innovative arrangement with the potential to rescue the objects from limbo and enhance the collections of the American museum as well as its African counterparts.
Under the plan, Mr. McCarthy will partly sell and partly donate the artifacts to the museum in Toledo, Ohio, which together with Ethiopian experts will investigate their origins and ownership histories.
Any determined to have left Ethiopia illegally will be returned to that country. Those artworks judged to have been exported appropriately will remain with the Toledo museum. The stewardship of other objects where the research remains indeterminate will be decided jointly by the Toledo museum and Ethiopian officials.
The Museums Special Section
The investigative process may take decades, but during that time the artifacts will be on display at various times in each of the countries. In a statement, museum officials estimated that perhaps hundreds of the items may eventually return to Ethiopia as part of the agreement.
“The goal is that the entire collection be available for viewing and study from time to time in both Toledo and Ethiopia with the details to be worked out as the collaboration evolves,” Mr. McCarthy, 71, said in an emailed statement.
Mr. McCarthy said his artifacts were acquired through dealers in London and New York and at auctions in London and elsewhere in Europe. He said he had been as rigorous as he could be in evaluating their histories. But he acknowledges that standards surrounding provenance have evolved.
“Things have changed,” he said. “In the early years, I felt comfortable that I was buying material already out of Ethiopia. While we checked against known lists of works in Ethiopia, I did not expect to see a chain of provenance back to the moment of export.”
Five items have already been designated as belonging to Ethiopia and will be returned directly from Mr. McCarthy’s collection. Mr. McCarthy is donating roughly two thirds of the other 375 artifacts, the museum said, and a third will be purchased by the museum, at prices set by an independent appraiser, to cover some of his investment over the years.
The increased attention governments now pay to preserving their cultural heritage is evident in the efforts by Italy, Cambodia, Turkey and others to aggressively pursue the return of antiquities that they believe were illegally taken from their countries.
For decades, given the heightened scrutiny, artifacts have been expected to have an export permit or records that show they left a country of origin before its law on the export of culturally significant objects went into effect. Some museums embrace a different standard, that of the 1970 UNESCO convention, under which nations agreed that institutions should not acquire artifacts without clear, documented evidence that they had left a country of origin before 1970 or had been legally exported after 1970.
Elizabeth Marlowe, professor of museum studies at Colgate University, said that long after 1970, though, collectors confronted an art market that had yet to embrace the evolving attitudes.
“They bought objects in auctions and from dealers that didn’t have provenance information going all the way back to the moment when the object left its country of origin,” she said
Toledo’s collaboration with Ethiopia, she thinks, is a good way to approach the problem. “You take on the responsibility of working out where it will go,” she said. “The key thing is to have partners on the ground in the country of origin who are giving you their blessing to do this work.”
Adam M. Levine, director of the Toledo Museum of Art, said in an interview that he recognized there were other efforts that addressed the same quandary. In 2022, for example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced a collaboration with Greece to exhibit on loan the collection of Cycladic antiquities privately assembled by businessman and philanthropist Leonard N. Stern with the acknowledgment that the works belonged to the Greek state.
In Toledo, the museum will take ownership of Mr. McCarthy’s Ethiopian collection before working out what to return.
“Which party owns which object,” Mr. McCarthy said, “is less relevant than that humanity — in Addis Ababa, in Toledo, and beyond — gets to enjoy these artworks on terms agreeable to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.”
The Toledo museum borrowed items from Mr. McCarthy’s collection for its 2024 exhibition “Ethiopia at the Crossroads.” Discussions about a possible long-term arrangement began at that time. Mr. McCarthy said he was impressed by the museum’s commitment to Ethiopian art history and its willingness to investigate the collection with Ethiopia.
“Rather than just write off Bob’s collection as something that could not be accessioned by an institution,” Mr. Levine said, “given the relationship we had with Ethiopia, we thought we should ask Ethiopia what they thought. It became an opportunity to engage with our Ethiopian colleagues.”
Sophie Ong, the curator in charge of the project for Toledo, said Ethiopia ratified a patrimony law in 1981, but the museum decided to rely on the earlier 1970 UNESCO date in setting the cutoff on when items have to have left Ethiopia.
“We are looking to act as a conduit,” she said.
Of the five artworks the museum has already identified as needing to be repatriated, two are religious manuscripts dating to the 15th century. It was determined that both were removed after 1970. As new evidence emerges, the museum expects the joint provenance research will lead to many more objects being returned.
Mr. McCarthy, who studied medieval history as an undergraduate and has a masters in medieval history from Columbia, has long been interested in art from the Middle Ages.
“Ethiopia is especially fascinating because the artwork is in the same genre as western European and Byzantine material,” he said in the email. “Miniature paintings on parchment in bound codices, processional crosses and icons painted on wood were being produced in Italy during the Renaissance and also in Ethiopia during the 14th to 16th centuries — but in Ethiopia they are being produced by African artists in a completely different style.”
The intention is that many of the repatriated works will be displayed at the National Museum of Ethiopia.
“This incredible collection of objects is extremely important to Ethiopia’s culture and history,” said Abebaw Ayalew Gella, director general of the Ethiopian Heritage Authority, a government agency responsible for Ethiopia’s cultural heritage. “This innovative partnership is a remarkable opportunity for our country and a model approach to cultural heritage.”
