# How Contested Objects Actually Go Home > Across the disputed objects in this archive, the instrument that delivered one to its claimant was almost never a judgment. The most complete legal victory on record has moved nothing. > The Study - 2026-08-24 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/how-contested-objects-actually-go-home/ ## Key points - The Statue of a Victorious Youth is subject to an Italian forfeiture order upheld by the Court of Cassation on 2 January 2019 and by the European Court of Human Rights on 2 May 2024, and it is still in the Getty Museum's collection as object number 77.AB.30. - The two objects that left American museums fastest, the Coffin of Nedjemankh and the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet, moved on a search warrant and an import offence, not on any finding about who owned them in antiquity. - Turkey claimed the upper half of the Weary Herakles in 1990 and received it by agreement on 22 September 2011. No lawsuit was ever filed in twenty-one years. - The Dutch Restitutions Committee held on 22 October 2018 that Amsterdam was not obliged to return Kandinsky's Bild mit Haeusern. The city returned it anyway in 2022. - Portrait of Wally was settled in July 2010 for nineteen million dollars paid by the Leopold Museum, which kept the painting. ## The instrument that moves an object is possession, not a ruling ## The Getty bronze has lost at every instance and has not moved ## Where the state holding the object is the claimant, it moves in months ## Negotiation delivers the object and costs about two decades ## A panel can refuse restitution and the object can still go back ## Sometimes what moves is the money and not the object A claimant who reads these records and concludes that the task is to win the argument has read them backwards. The argument was won in every case here, and in the Victorious Youth it was won at every instance up to Strasbourg. What decided whether an object travelled was who had their hands on it, and whether any state's police power reached that far. The order of work follows from that. Establish who would have to sign, or be compelled, and by which authority, before spending a decade establishing who is right. ## Questions **If a claimant wins a forfeiture order, why can the object stay where it is?** Because a forfeiture order binds property within the issuing state's jurisdiction. Where the object sits abroad, the order has to be recognised and enforced by the courts of the state that holds it, and that is a separate proceeding with its own requirements. In the Victorious Youth case the European Court of Human Rights upheld Italy's order in 2024, and the accompanying case report records that enforcement by United States authorities remains uncertain. The statue is still in the Getty's collection. **Why did the Nedjemankh coffin and the Gilgamesh tablet move so much faster than the negotiated cases?** Because the state that took them was the state they were physically in, and because neither case turned on proving the original theft. The coffin was seized on a New York search warrant; the tablet was forfeited on the ground of illegal importation in 2014. Both are domestic law-enforcement instruments executed against property in the same jurisdiction, which is why they ran in months rather than decades. **Does a restitution panel's refusal end a claim?** No. A panel advises or issues a binding opinion between the parties that referred the question to it; it does not remove the holder's ability to transfer the object voluntarily. The Dutch Restitutions Committee found on 22 October 2018 that Amsterdam was not obliged to return Bild mit Haeusern, and Amsterdam returned it in 2022. Read the panel's decision as one input into the holder's decision, not as the disposal of the claim. ## Sources - [1] Case of The J. Paul Getty Trust and Others v. Italy, Judgment, European Court of Human Rights (First Section), 2 May 2024, application no. 35271/19; case report, American Journal of International Law. - [2] The J. Paul Getty Trust and Others v. Italy, HUDOC case record, application no. 35271/19. - [3] Statue of a Victorious Youth, object number 77.AB.30, J. Paul Getty Museum collection record, including the museum's published provenance. Read 23 August 2026. - [4] United States Returns to Iraq Rare Tablet Bearing Portion of the Epic of Gilgamesh, United States Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, press release 21-922, 23 September 2021. - [5] The Metropolitan Museum of Art Returns Coffin to Egypt, Metropolitan Museum of Art press release, February 2019. - [6] Weary Herakles, Antiquities and Cultural Property provenance statement, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, giving the 1981 acquisition, the 1990 claim, the 1992 cast comparison and the agreement of 22 September 2011. - [7] Weary Herakles, Turkey and Museum of Fine Arts Boston, case chronology, Art-Law Centre, University of Geneva, recording that no litigation was ever filed. - [8] Painting with Houses by Wassily Kandinsky, binding opinion of the Restitutions Committee, 22 October 2018. - [9] Painting by Kandinsky handed over to the heirs of Jewish former owners, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. - [10] Portrait of Wally, United States and Estate of Lea Bondi and Leopold Museum, case chronology and settlement terms, Art-Law Centre, University of Geneva. - [11] Getty Museum and Italian Ministry of Culture Sign Agreement in Rome and the Return of Objects, J. Paul Getty Trust news release, 2007.