Culture Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis said yesterday that he was due to receive the director of New York’s Getty Museum, Michael Brand, for talks in Athens on May 16 as police announced the discovery of a fresh cache of ancient artifacts at a villa on Paros belonging to the museum’s former curator.

“We are engaging in open dialogue as regards the museum’s Greek exhibits and issues of broader interest to Greece,” Voulgarakis told reporters yesterday, adding, “We are particularly interested in the return of Greek antiquities.”

Meanwhile, police said that 12 “illegally held” ancient artifacts — including two marble sarcophagi and a marble olive press — had been confiscated from a villa belonging to the Getty’s former curator, Marion True, who faces trial in Italy on charges of conspiring to trade in stolen antiquities. A raid on True’s villa last month yielded 17 ancient artifacts and led to a subsequent raid on a villa in Schinoussa, near Naxos — belonging to the late antiquities dealer Christos Michailidis — which yielded hundreds more illegal antiquities.