Most people would consider themselves lucky to acquire just one Botticelli or Michelangelo, but Ante Topic Mimara claimed to own works by these artists, among others. The late Croatian’s 3,700-piece collection contains Egyptian antiquities, glass, ivory, silver and tapestries, as well as paintings by Caravaggio, Manet and Degas. In 1973, he agreed to donate his holdings to Yugoslavia in exchange for perks such as housing and an annual stipend of $100,000.

Mimara died before the 1987 debut of his eponymous museum but previewed its reception when he exhibited highlights from his collection in Zagreb in 1983. Italian art historian Federico Zeri told ARTnews that it featured “trash along with some good things. Ninety percent is junk.” Virtually everyone disagreed with the attributions that Mimara supplied, and those who did not dismiss the hoard whispered that it might have been stolen from victims of the Nazis.

Mimara’s biography is difficult to pinpoint. Depending on the source consulted, he was a friend of Tito, a forger, a restorer, a painter, an art dealer, a wealthy businessman or a spy. The plunder rumor sprang from his actions at the Allies’ Central Collecting Point in Munich in 1949, where he accepted on behalf of Yugoslavia treasures that the Nazis supposedly took from the country. Unfortunately, most of the 166 objects Mimara requested actually belonged to other nations. CCP officials learned the truth too late, but American investigators theorized that Wiltrud Mersmann, a junior curator at the Munich location, gave Mimara the information he needed to file believeable claims. Although Mimara and Mersmann later married, she never admitted to assisting in his scheme. (The Americans could not confirm that Yugoslavia received the art that Mimara took, but it appears that almost nothing he donated came from the postwar haul.)

While he was a curator at The Cloisters, Thomas Hoving purchased one of the only genuine and exquisite items that Mimara ever handled: The Bury St. Edmunds cross, a 12th-century work of carved ivory. He completed the $600,000 deal in 1963 after several meetings with Mimara, who tried to interest him in other pieces that Hoving believes he either faked or ruined by “Mimarizing”—his term for the Yugoslav’s heavy restoration. “I got to know his distinct style,” he says, “so for me, it was easy (to spot Mimara’s handiwork).”

Hoving estimates that most items on display resemble what he saw during the 1960s but admits that he has never visited the museum. (He is familiar with some of its holdings, having received an advance museum catalogue in the mid-1980s from Mimara.) “A fake ruins my digestion, so hundreds would give me a problem,” he says. “Besides, I saw too many when I had to deal with this guy.”

Mimara Museum director Tugomir Luksic declines to cite examples of Mimara items that have since been reattributed, but says, “The changes are a work in progress. In a general way, the collection needs to be researched, and that’s what we do. It has to be examined in detail.” His stance might sound reasonable were it not essentially the same thing his colleagues said when the museum opened 21 years ago.