Michael C. Carlos Museum

This guide to the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta follows a small carved goddess, Terpsichore, dug up by looters near Dodona, Greece, in nineteen ninety-seven and smuggled out before any archaeologist saw her in the ground. It traces how Greek officials first dismissed her as a fake, how the museum bought her in two thousand two from dealer Robert Hecht, who was later tried in Italy for trafficking looted antiquities, and how Greece's two thousand seven request for her return went unanswered for years. A Chronicle of Higher Education investigation later found the Carlos held hundreds of objects with ties to the illegal antiquities trade, a claim the museum could no longer brush aside.