The Dallas Museum of Art has agreed to return six antiquities that were looted illegally from Italy. In return, Italy is loaning the DMA an art installation.
In exchange, Italy is loaning the Dallas museum treasures from the Spina necropolis (pictured, above) housed at the Ferrara archaeological museum.
Italy's culture ministry announced the agreement Thursday. The objects being returned include Etruscan-era kraters -- vases -- and a pair of bronze shields.
The ministry's press office said that unlike past negotiations with U.S. museums, which involved threatened or real legal action to recover looted antiquities, Dallas museum director Maxwell Anderson spontaneously offered to return the items after the museum couldn't determine their provenance.
Italy launched an aggressive campaign a decade ago to retrieve looted artifacts. Its most famous recovery is the Euphronios Krater from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
