For more than two decades, Houston has been home to a large pair of restored 13th-century Byzantine frescoes that Menil Collection founder Dominique de Menil purchased from art thieves in 1984.

Now the Menil is working to return them to their rightful owner, the Holy Archbishopric of Cyprus.

While that seemingly recalls recent decisions by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and others to return priceless artworks that improperly left their countries of origin, there's a difference: Neither de Menil nor the museum she founded ever claimed to own the frescoes.

In an unusual gesture of cultural stewardship, de Menil spent more than $522,000 to buy the frescoes - and another $815,000 to restore them - all while acknowledging they belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church of Cyprus. She maintained that position even after creating a foundation that raised $4 million to build a chapel on the Menil campus for their ongoing display.

Hoping to extend a long-term loan agreement with the church, Menil director Josef Helfenstein visited the archbishopric in June. But although the small votive chapel that originally housed the frescoes is in the northern part of the island that Turkish troops have occupied since 1974, the church declined to extend the agreement. It expires in February.

"(The frescoes) are living monuments and symbols of our faith," Costas Katsaros, head of the archbishopric's legal department, said in an email. "Those treasures of our religion and cultural heritage are of invaluable merit for Cypriot people, who were long waiting for their return in their homeland."

Decision still pending

Katsaros said the church will work with the Cypriot Department of Antiquities to place the frescoes "in a proper environment in the free part of Cyprus" with the goal of eventually returning them to the original chapel "in their holy sacred land on the day of its liberation."

The archbishopric's building complex in Nicosia includes a Byzantine Museum that Helfenstein said draws tourists and includes a number of recovered artworks that had been looted from the northern, occupied part of Cyprus.

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However, Katsaros said no decision about the frescoes' placement has been made beyond pledges from the church and the Cyprus government to "cooperate and do their best in order to show the magnitude of those treasures."

Without the frescoes, Helfenstein and the Menil's site plan committee will have to decide what role the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, which was designed by de Menil's son, Francois, will play in a campus already being re-imagined in a master site plan developed by David Chipperfield Architects in 2009.

Possibilities range from displaying objects from the Menil's small but respected Byzantine art collection to de-consecrating the chapel and using it as an archives building for the Menil and the Rothko Chapel, Helfenstein said.

The first steps will be to see the interior without Francois de Menil's structure of black steel, wood and opaque glass that echoes the forms of the original chapel in Lysi and to consider the building's dialogue with the rest of the campus, Helfenstein said.

"It has to have a strong purpose," he said of the building's future use. "It shouldn't be something sort of provisionary that works a little bit but is not really satisfying aesthetically because the building is not really made for it."

Future collaboration

Despite his disappointment that the frescoes' loan won't be renewed, Helfenstein said he's optimistic the Menil and the Cypriots will be able to collaborate in the future.

"I think the visit (to the archbishopric) was really very good, because we had a face-to-face conversation," Helfenstein said.

"It was very clear that we are custodians. We are not the owners," he said. "We will do whatever they need us to do, so there's nothing there that is an obstacle. So I think that this is not the end of the story."

douglas.britt@chron.com