[MSN] Getty Is Expected to Return Gold Wreath to Greece

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

December 11, 2006
Getty Is Expected to Return Gold Wreath to Greece 
By HUGH EAKIN and ANTHEE CARASSAVA

Photos:
http://www.tiny.cc/7CzSw


After nearly a year of negotiations, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles
has agreed in principle to return a rare fourth-century B.C. gold funerary
wreath to Greece that cultural officials there contend was illegally removed
from Greek soil, an expert briefed on the talks said today. 

The museum, which bought the artifact in 1993, reached its decision in
recent days after new information came to light about the wreath's likely
origin, the expert added. He said he was speaking on condition of anonymity
because of an agreement on both sides not to speak with the news media until
an announcement could be made. 

Reached late today, an official at the Greek Culture Ministry in Athens said
that a "very positive development" regarding the talks with the Getty would
be made Monday at a news conference at noon Athens time (5 a.m. New York
time). She declined to say whether a decision had been made on returning the
wreath.

Ron Hartwig, a Getty spokesman, declined to comment. 

The expected accord would come after weeks of growing scrutiny of the
museum's acquisition of the wreath, to which Greece first sought claim in
the late 1990s. In November, Greek prosecutors opened a preliminary
investigation of Marion True, the former antiquities curator at the Getty,
focusing on her involvement in the purchase.

For years the precise site of the wreath's excavation had been unclear. But
this month Greek officials sent the Getty a new dossier of evidence,
including documents and photographs, to support their claim that it was
found in Greece.

The Greek police said they now had evidence that the funerary wreath was dug
up by a farmer in 1990 near Serres, in northern Greece, and passed on to the
art market through Germany and Switzerland before being sold to the Getty in
1993. 

A Getty catalog identifies the delicate floral decorations on the wreath as
"plants that grow profusely in Northern Greece," suggesting it may have been
created in the region, although such information alone cannot determine
where and when it was excavated in modern times.

It remains unclear how a resolution of the claim for the wreath could affect
the Greek legal investigation of several people involved in the sale of the
wreath, including Ms. True, the former Getty curator. 

In an interview last week in New York, the Greek culture minister, Georgios
A. Voulgarakis, stressed that the Greek judiciary is independent from the
government, and that his talks with the Getty and other museums did not
hinge on any legal proceedings in progress. Nevertheless he said that once
the talks are resolved, "we can discuss everything." 

It is also unclear whether the new accord will address a sixth-century
marble kore, the statue of a young woman, acquired by the Getty that Greece
also claims. That object is believed to have been made on Paros, a Greek
island, but Greece's request for its return had been complicated by its
appearance on a separate list of 52 objects that Italy asked back from the
Getty in January. 

(In November the Getty unilaterally decided to return 26 of the 52 objects
to Italy after talks between the two sides broke down.) 

In recent weeks Italian officials have indicated that they are prepared to
drop their competing claim for the kore. More generally, Mr. Voulgarakis
said, Greece and Italy now plan to forge a formal alliance to seek the
return of ancient artifacts from museums in the United States and Europe. 

That pact, which he said he expected to complete early next year, would
cement recent collaboration between the countries as both pursue
increasingly muscular campaigns to retrieve prized Greek and Roman
antiquities. 

Outlining that strategy in the interview in New York, Mr. Voulgarakis said
his country wanted to benefit from the Italians' growing expertise in
tracking antiquities and mixing carrot-and-stick diplomacy with criminal
prosecutions.

"The Italians are very well organized - very, very well organized," Mr.
Voulgarakis said. "Every country has its own policy and priorities, but we
can help each other."

Ionnis Diotis, a Greek prosecutor who has worked on the Getty investigation,
said that after discussions with Getty lawyers in the spring, he and the
head of Greece's art-theft police went to Italy to seek help in
investigating the wreath and other antiquities matters. He said he had
weighed the possibility of investigating Getty board trustees who reviewed
the purchase of the wreath and other objects because final decisions on
acquisitions rest with the board.

For countries seeking the repatriation of antiquities in foreign collections
and museums, the threat of legal action has become a important tool. In 2005
Italy put Ms. True on trial on charges of conspiring to import looted
artifacts, and in recent weeks Italian officials have made it clear that the
outcome of her ongoing trial in Rome could depend partly on the Getty's
willingness to meet the culture ministry's demands. 

The accord between Italy and Greece outlined by Mr. Voulgarakis would
include provisions for enforcement and cultural diplomacy. Because of their
common interests and shared classical heritage, he said, the two countries
might pursue some claims jointly, and then determine which objects should go
to which country. 

In recent weeks Italian officials have acknowledged sharing information with
their Greek counterparts and have indicated that they plan to extend the
collaboration.

Mr. Voulgarakis said he hoped to follow Italy's strategy of pressing
art-market countries like the United States for bilateral import bans of
classical archaeological material. He also said he was opening an office in
the Greek culture ministry to compile an inventory of Greek antiquities in
foreign collections and museums.

Mr. Voulgarakis described the accord with Italy as part of a broader effort
to repatriate antiquities of "national importance." Above all, he said,
Greece is strengthening its campaign to win back the Elgin Marbles from the
British Museum in preparation for next year's inauguration of an Acropolis
museum that has been specially designed to house the marbles with other
Parthenon sculptures. The marbles, sent to Britain by the diplomatic
emissary Lord Elgin two centuries ago, include much of the Parthenon frieze
and other statuary. 

"We do not intend to empty museums around the globe, but the Parthenon
frieze has to be reunified, otherwise it has no historical value," Mr.
Voulgarakis said in the interview.

For years the British Museum has firmly and repeatedly rebuffed Greek
demands for the return of the marbles, which were removed well before the
modern Greek state existed. In the 1980s, Mr. Voulgarakis acknowledged, it
was possible to argue that the sculptures were better housed in the British
Museum than at the original site, where remaining parts of the frieze
suffered from corrosive air pollution in Athens. 

But international support for returning the marbles to Greece has grown, Mr.
Voulgarakis said, and the new Acropolis museum would allow all surviving
Parthenon sculptures to be reunited and protected in situ in what he called
"one of the most advanced archaeological museums in the world."

Toward this goal, Mr. Voulgarakis is also trying to retrieve 18 Parthenon
fragments in the collections of other European institutions, including the
National Museum in Copenhagen, the Vatican Museums in Rome and the Louvre in
Paris. In September the University of Heidelberg returned a small fragment,
and he said that discussions were progressing with several other museums,
although he declined to name them. Many of these pieces were also removed
from Greece in the early 19th century or even earlier. 

Mr. Voulgarakis likened the Elgin Marbles' situation to the Mona Lisa's
being cut up into pieces. "Imagine if you have the face in Sweden, one hand
in the United States, the breasts in Japan, and the other hand in Italy," he
said. Invoking the Mona Lisa's Italian title, he said, "What kind of
Gioconda is that?" 

(He did not mention that the Mona Lisa - fully intact - is in France, not in
Italy, where it was originally created centuries ago.) 

Hugh Eakin reported from New York, and Anthee Carassava from Athens.

http://www.nytimes.com/