The Mendelsohn Case: Implications for Future Restitution

August 28, 2026

By Kira Hernandez and Rebecca Amen

In August 2024, California-based collector Aaron Mendelsohn filed suit in the Central District of California against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, seeking a declaratory judgment that he was the rightful owner of a headless Roman bronze statue he had purchased in 2007 from New York’s Royal-Athena Galleries for $1.33 million.^[1] The bronze sculpture is one of a number of works believed to have been illegally imported from Bubon, an ancient city in modern-day Turkey, and the D.A.’s office had been working to restitute said artifacts to Turkey, having already secured the return of objects from twelve institutions.^[2] By December 2025, the statue had been repatriated to Turkey. The case it generated along the way raises unresolved questions about the appropriate use of criminal process in antiquities repatriation — questions that will matter long after the Bubon bronzes are home.

The Object and Its History

In the 1960s, individuals from a village near the ancient site of Bubon began plundering a Sebasteion — an ancient shrine with monumental bronze statues of Roman emperors — and selling looted antiquities to smugglers.^[3] Working with Switzerland-based trafficker George Zakos and New York-and-Paris-based trafficker Robert Hecht, they unlawfully removed the antiquities from Turkey, transporting them to Switzerland or the United Kingdom before onward shipment to the United States or other European destinations. Once in the United States, New York-based dealers such as Jerome Eisenberg’s Royal-Athena Galleries funneled the stolen Bubon bronzes into museum exhibitions and academic publications, laundering the pieces with newly crafted provenance.^[4] Mendelsohn purchased his bronze from Royal-Athena in 2007 with a guarantee of legal importation, an Art Loss Register clearance, and an invoice noting the piece was said to be from Bubon but was acquired in Basel, Switzerland in 1967, placing it before the 1970 UNESCO Convention cutoff.^[5] He believed his purchase was legally sound.

The Legal Dispute

The central argument in Mendelsohn’s complaint was not simply that he owned the statue, it was that DANY was taking a criminal approach to what should have been a civil matter. The complaint alleged that the D.A. was using the criminal process, rather than the more traditional civil process, to intimidate him out of his right to due process, and that the proper vehicle for a repatriation claim was a civil replevin action brought by Turkey — a proceeding that would have afforded Mendelsohn discovery rights, the ability to cross-examine witnesses, and a meaningful opportunity to contest the evidence.^[6] By invoking New York criminal procedure instead, DANY was bypassing those protections entirely. The complaint further argued that DANY lacked jurisdiction altogether: the Bronze Male had resided in California since August 2007, well outside New York’s five-year statute of limitations for criminal possession of stolen property.^[7]

The Central District of California dismissed Mendelsohn’s suit in March 2025, finding that a declaratory judgment vesting title in Mendelsohn would not redress his alleged injuries, because DANY was not itself claiming right, title, or interest in the Bronze Male — a valid search warrant would not grant DANY title, and Turkey retained the ability to file a replevin action regardless of the court’s ruling.^[8]

An amended complaint followed in April, but in September 2025, DANY issued an arrest warrant after presenting evidence it said showed Mendelsohn had knowingly possessed stolen property in the Bronze Male.^[9] The warrant expounded the New York penal code’s protections for original owners, “even if [the stolen property] is in the possession of a good-faith purchaser for value.”^[10] Yet the warrant argued that Mendelsohn knew the Bronze Male was stolen and conspired with others to transport it out of New York and later, to increase its value and conceal it from law enforcement. The warrant also set forth the justification for New York’s jurisdiction, stating that Mendelsohn purchasing the Bronze Male in New York City sufficed – not all elements of the offense had to occur in New York.

The Resolution

Mendelsohn ultimately relinquished the sculpture and paid to have it shipped back to New York. Pursuant to a deferred prosecution agreement, Mendelsohn agreed to surrender the statue so that the D.A.’s Office could repatriate it to the people of Turkey, and was exonerated of all wrongdoing in exchange.^[11] The bronze was returned at a ceremony in December 2025 alongside 43 other antiquities valued collectively at more than $2.5 million.^[12]

Why It Matters

Manhattan is a unique legal forum for its physical location and its central position in the trading and dealing of art, as well as for a defining maxim in its penal code: “once stolen, always stolen.”^[13] The Antiquities Trafficking Unit has leveraged Manhattan’s uniqueness to turn the tide in the fight against the illicit trafficking of cultural property. By harnessing the jurisdiction it has over New York City, a hub for the trafficking of art, the ATU has repatriated and returned approximately 6,400 objects with cultural significance.^[14] They have convicted 18 individuals of crimes related to cultural property.^[15]

But like Mendelsohn, some collectors and institutions subject to the ATU’s efforts have fought back, raising questions as to whether New York’s criminal law should be applied to their cases, or whether a civil law framework may be more appropriate. Their challengers often reference the lack of due process or question the legal and factual bases of the ATU’s arguments, claiming that they did not knowingly possess stolen objects or that the evidence does not support the ATU’s findings on provenance.^[16] Yet in cases like Mendelsohn, defendants cede the object before a trial.

The Mendelsohn case is one of the clearest recent examples of the due process tension at the heart of antiquities repatriation in the United States. DANY’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit has been enormously effective — returning objects from major institutions including the Met, the Getty, and the Cleveland Museum of Art — but its use of criminal procedure as a lever against good-faith collectors raises questions the courts have not yet fully resolved. For example, the dismissal of Mendelsohn’s suit turned on ripeness and redressability rather than the underlying merits of his due process claim,^[17] leaving the substantive questions he raised unanswered.

As DANY continues its investigation of the remaining Bubon bronzes, and as other district attorneys’ offices consider similar approaches to repatriation, the line between legitimate criminal investigation and coercive civil process workaround will need clearer definition — ideally by courts willing to engage the merits, or by legislative guidance establishing a dedicated civil law framework for cultural property repatriation claims.

About the Authors:

Kira Hernandez (Center for Art Law Summer 2026 Intern) is a recent graduate of Williams College, where she received her B.A. in Art History and Justice & Law Studies. Currently, Kira is pursuing a M.S. in Informatics at San Jose State University, where her research focuses primarily on museum informatics, collections management systems, and improving the integration of provenance research into public-facing databases..

Rebecca Amen (Center for Art Law Summer 2026 Legal Intern) is a rising second-year law student at New York University School of Law, where she will help to lead the student art law organization next year. She also participates in the intellectual property law student organization at NYU Law. With an interest in human rights that originated during her time as a philosophy major at Middlebury College, she is deeply interested in cultural heritage and cultural property law. She also hopes to develop her expertise in museum law and nonprofit law throughout her career.

Select References

1. Complaint at ¶¶ 1, 10, 13, Mendelsohn v. Bragg, No. 2:24-cv-07420 (C.D. Cal. Aug. 30, 2024). ↑
2. Vittoria Benzine, A Collector Sues to Fight Seizure of Roman Bronze Statue, Artnet News (Sept. 6, 2024), https://news.artnet.com/art-world/mendelsohn-lawsuit-fights-seizure-bronze-statue-2531251. ↑
3. Press Release, Manhattan Dist. Attorney’s Office, D.A. Bragg Announces Return of 43 Antiquities to the People of Türkiye (Dec. 8, 2025), https://manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-announces-return-of-43-antiquities-to-the-people-of-turkiye/. ↑
4. Id. ↑
5. Complaint, supra note 1, at ¶¶ 15–19. ↑
6. Id. at ¶¶ 3, 33, 37. ↑
7. Id. at ¶ 35; N.Y. Crim. Proc. § 690.10(1)–(4) (McKinney 2024); N.Y. Penal § 450.10 (McKinney 2024). ↑
8. Order Granting Motion to Dismiss at 11–12, Mendelsohn, 2025 WL 947900 (C.D. Cal. Mar. 28, 2025). ↑
9. Vittoria Benzine, U.S. Returns Dozens of Stolen Artifacts to Turkey, Including Long-Contested Bronze Statue, Artnet News (Dec. 9, 2025), https://news.artnet.com/art-world/us-turkey-sculptures-repatriated-aaron-mendelsohn-2726367. ↑
10. Felony Arrest Warrant at 4, The People of the State of New York v. Aaron Mendelsohn (Sept. 2, 2025), https://www.artcrimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-09-02-arrest-warrant-aaron-mendelsohn.pdf (quoting Solomon R. Guggenheim Found. v. Lubell, 77 N.Y.2d. 311, 317 (1991)). ↑
11. Press Release, Manhattan Dist. Attorney’s Office, supra note 3. ↑
12. Id. ↑
13. Felony Arrest Warrant at 5, People v. Mendelsohn. ↑
14. Press Release, Manhattan Dist. Attorney’s Office, D.A. Bragg Announces Return of 59 Antiquities to the People of Italy, Iraq, and Indonesia (July 8, 2026), https://manhattanda.org/d-a-bragg-announces-return-of-fifty-nine-antiquities-to-the-people-of-italy-iraq-and-indonesia/. ↑
15. Id. ↑
16. Graham Bowley, The Role of New York’s Lauded Looted Art Unit Is Challenged in Court, N.Y. Times (Oct. 8, 2024). ↑
17. Order Granting Motion to Dismiss, supra note 8, at 11–12. ↑