The Dietrich von Bothmer Fragment Collection

Dietrich von Bothmer (1918-2009) was Head of the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1959, Chairman from 1973, and Distinguished Research Curator from his retirement in 1990. He was a pre-eminent scholar of Greek vase-painting, who amassed an extensive personal collection of fragments that enabled him to attribute and reassemble numerous vases from pieces dispersed across different collections. Bothmer began acquiring these fragments in the late 1960s, in part through purchases from European and North American dealers and collectors such as Frieda Tchacos, Robert Hecht, and Jiri Frel. He frequently noted the initials of the people from whom he acquired the fragments on the fragments themselves, but beyond this, few pieces have extensive collection histories or documented findspots. Bothmer gifted the majority to the Metropolitan Museum upon his death in 2009. Upwards of 300 fragments, as well as some complete vessels, were donated to the Michael C. Carlos Museum between 2002 and 2006. In 2023, the Carlos transferred pottery sherds donated by Bothmer to the District Attorney of New York. Another five fragments donated by Bothmer were repatriated to the Italian Republic in 2024.