John Taylor Johnston

John Taylor Johnston, president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, advanced his own money for the first Cesnola collection of Cypriot antiquities and paid for its shipping. When Luigi Palma di Cesnola offered the collection from London, where it was held by Rollin and Feuardent, Johnston offered to advance the sum himself while the trustees looked for a subscription. The British Museum had bid 10,000 pounds for the Golgoi sculptures and inscriptions alone. Marangou gives Johnston's offer as 60,000 dollars and reports 50,000 as the sum agreed, paid as 20,000 at once, 15,000 after a year and 15,000 after two¹. Masson places the trustees' favourable decision at the end of 1872, urged by William T. Blodgett, who had seen the London exhibition; the purchase became definitive in May 1874². Johnston paid directly for shipping the 275 chests in five ships¹.

The trustees bought a second collection from November 1876. The Curium Treasure, except the gold, left London on the Danemark with Johnston as receiver^1,2. In 1878 he signed a statement printed in the American edition of Cesnola's Cyprus, which lists Cesnola's gifts and sales of small collections and says the Museum held about two thirds of all the objects found³.

Johnston's name came up again in the Feuardent dispute. In a statement to the American Numismatic Society, Feuardent said that J. S. Morgan, "acting for Mr. John Taylor Johnston", paid for the 1872 purchase by a check for 2,800 pounds, of which only 1,400 were credited to him¹. On 31 August 1881 Alexander D. Savage wrote to Johnston at Nantucket resigning over the restorations⁶. After the public examination of spring 1882, Johnston asked the naval officer Henry H. Gorringe to examine the statues¹.