A gold funerary wreath, c320-300BC, and a marble statue of a Kore, c530BC — both jewels of the Getty’s collection — will be going home after the Greek Culture Ministry proved that they had been excavated illegally.

Michael Brand, the Australian-born director of the Getty, said in London yesterday that the museum would lose out financially, having paid $4.5 million for the two objects in the early 1990s.

There was no chance of a refund from the sellers. One of the pieces was bought from Robin Symes, the disgraced London dealer jailed for contempt of court.

Although Dr Brand did not comment on the Marbles dispute, he said that this was the appropriate way to resolve complex ownership claims involving ancient works of art.

The return of the antiquities is part of his attempt to wipe clean the Getty’s slate. Over the past year, the museum has faced the humiliation of watching Marion True, its former senior curator, face trial in Rome on charges of conspiring to receive stolen artwork.

In May investigators claimed to have found 12 ancient relics in her Greek island villa. Ms True denied knowingly buying looted artworks.

The museum and its parent, the Getty Trust, had also been in turmoil over the abrupt resignation of Dr Brand’s predecessor, Deborah Gribbon, and the scandal of the perks enjoyed by Barry Munitz, the trust’s president and chief executive, who resigned this year. Reports suggested that no perk was too extravagant for him.

The California attorneygeneral’s office opened an inquiry into the sale and other activities at the Getty, including Mr Munitz’s pay and benefits package. Dr Brand said that although no evidence of wrongdoing was found, the attorney-general would conduct six-monthly reviews over the next 18 months. “He took note of our policy changes,” he added.

In appointing Dr Brand, a scholar with a successful track-record as director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the Getty Trust set out to open a new chapter in the museum’s history.

Under his leadership, the Getty, collection of which concentrates on the art of Greece and Rome, the Renaissance and early modern Europe, will now work with the Greek ministry on loans of important ancient artefacts and exhibitions. Acquisitions of antiquities would now be bound by the 1970 Unesco cut-off date, Dr Brand said.

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