Robert E. Hecht Jr

Robert Emmanuel Hecht Jr. (1919-2012) was an American antiquities dealer who supplied major museums worldwide with Greek, Etruscan and Roman art. A Baltimore native and Haverford Classics graduate, he served as a U.S. naval officer in WWII, interpreted at the Nuremberg war-crimes investigations, then studied archaeology in Zurich and as a Rome Prize Fellow (1947-1949). From the 1950s he brokered important collections, notably Ludwig Curtius's, and sold headline pieces such as the late-sixth-century BC Euphronios Krater to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1972).

Allegations that many objects he handled had been illicitly excavated led to long-running disputes with Italian and Turkish authorities. In 2005 he and former Getty curator Marion True were tried in Rome for conspiracy to traffic looted antiquities but the case was dismissed in 2012 when the statute of limitations expired.