[MSN] Director of Getty Is Unrattled by Claims of Italy and Greece to Antiquities

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

May 15, 2006
Director of Getty Is Unrattled by Claims of Italy and Greece to Antiquities 
By HUGH EAKIN

PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. - The museum's opulent marble walls come from the
same Mediterranean sites that once supplied the builders of antiquity. The
grounds are painstakingly planted with 50 different Roman herbs. And the new
pathways give visitors the impression of passing through layers of
archaeological strata.

Yet, rather than impressing the governments of the Mediterranean lands to
which it pays such elaborate tribute, the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades,
Calif., has roused their anger. Saying that the villa's galleries are full
of antiquities that were illegally removed from their historical settings,
Italy and Greece are demanding the return of dozens of objects. 

On May 16, Michael Brand, the new director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in
Los Angeles, which runs the villa, is expected to meet the full force of the
Greek government's arguments in a session with the minister of culture,
Georgios A. Voulgarakis, in Athens. Yet in a recent interview at the Getty
Museum, he seemed unperturbed.

"It is a matter of not panicking and thinking the Getty Museum has a
crisis," he said, "but of approaching it calmly and rationally and trying to
work toward a solution." 

The Greeks have laid claim to four objects in the Getty's collection,
including a prized gold funerary wreath that graces the cover of the
museum's antiquities catalog. They have opened a broad investigation of the
family of a Greek dealer who did business with the Getty for many years. And
the Italian government wants 52 artifacts returned.

The claims by Greece and Italy have been no small headache for Mr. Brand,
who inherited the problem along with a legacy of management turmoil when he
took over as director at the beginning of the year. 

The previous director, Deborah Gribbon, had resigned 15 months earlier,
citing serious differences with Barry Munitz, the chief executive of the
Getty Trust; Mr. Munitz was under public scrutiny for his lavish
expense-account spending, and he resigned barely a month after Mr. Brand
assumed his post. 

"You could say it has been a challenging four months," Mr. Brand, previously
the director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, said dryly. One of his
first tasks was reopening the villa in late January after a $275 million
expansion and renovation, normally an occasion for a big celebration. But
the mastermind behind the remade villa - Marion True, the Getty's former
antiquities curator - was on trial in Rome on charges of trafficking in
antiquities looted from Italian soil. Mr. Brand himself missed the opening
because of a meeting with officials in Rome to discuss the Italian claim. 

Yet Mr. Brand, 48, a quiet Australian native with a Harvard Ph.D., seems
cool under fire. He expressed a firm commitment to "do the right thing"
about the disputed antiquities and said that opening a dialogue with the
Italian and Greek governments had been a top priority. 

He noted that the Getty had returned several pieces to Italy in the past and
suggested that it was prepared to return other objects - even important
pieces on display in the galleries - if necessary. "You have to be a little
dispassionate about it," he said.

Yet Mr. Brand was equally adamant about the need to make a thorough
independent review of the claims and not to be pushed to meet what he called
"artificial deadlines." 

At the Rome meeting, Italian officials presented the Getty with evidence to
support their claims, and in recent weeks they have begun to show impatience
that the Getty has not yet made a formal response. Meanwhile, in a heralded
pact, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York agreed in February to
relinquish title to 21 objects that Italy asserts were looted. In exchange
the Met is promised special long-term loans. While stressing that the
Getty's staff and lawyers are nearing the end of their review of Italy's
claims and that he is moving forward with Greece, Mr. Brand offered no
timetable for a reply to either country. "These are very complex issues," he
said. "When you look at our list of 52 objects from Italy, there are a whole
range of situations." 

One of the disputed objects, he said, is a stone torso of a young woman, a
kore, that has been claimed by both Greece and Italy. (The Getty's own
catalog identifies the statue as probably coming from the Greek island
Paros.) 

Another is a portrait head that some scholars think is a fake. And even in
cases in which the evidence appears to be clear, he said, there are
complicating factors.

Much of the evidence consists of photographs of looted objects seized from
the archive of Giacomo Medici - a dealer who was convicted in 2004 of
antiquities trafficking in Italy - that match objects at the Getty.
Documents show that Mr. Medici was in contact with Ms. True, the former
curator, and passed on a number of illicit works to the Getty.

But in the case of an Etruscan terra-cotta antefix, or roof ornament,
installed on the ground floor of the Getty Villa, Mr. Brand said that a
photograph seized from Mr. Medici was only a partial match. The photograph
shows the bottom half of the antefix that is now in the museum, yet is
paired with a different top half that was never acquired by the Getty. The
Getty's top half does not appear in any of the photographs. 

"So what do you do?" Mr. Brand asked. "Break it apart again and send them
half?" 

Adding to the complications, the Getty continues to finance Ms. True's
defense team in the Rome trial, and any move on the Getty's part - whether
conciliatory or defensive - could affect the outcome of the case. 

"One of the frustrations about Marion's trial is that while I want to talk
about things openly and pursue innovative solutions, it is very hard to talk
when you have a colleague, an ex-colleague, on trial in a foreign country,"
Mr. Brand said. 

Even so, Mr. Brand went out of his way to praise Ms. True, characterizing
her direction of the villa reinstallation as brilliant and visionary. He
called her abrupt resignation from the Getty last fall a tragedy. He also
defended the contributions of the former Getty trustee Barbara Fleischman
and her husband, Lawrence, who died in 1997. Their antiquities collection
and its acquisition by the Getty in 1996 have been at the center of the case
against Ms. True. 

Getty officials make no apologies for having assembled their collection with
the help of private collectors, from material on the open market that often
lacks archaeological information. Visitors to the villa are constantly
reminded of the contributions of Ms. True and the Fleischmans, in whose
honor a new outdoor amphitheater has been named. 

"We've always approached the pieces in the collection as works of art," said
Karol Wight, acting curator of antiquities and former assistant curator to
Ms. True, during a tour of the villa. "We're not an archaeological museum."

That philosophy is evident at the villa, where about 1,200 Greek, Roman, and
Etruscan works, often of exceptional beauty, have been immaculately arranged
in uncluttered galleries. The emphasis is not on specific sites, but on the
overlapping histories of ancient Greece, Etruria and Rome. 

Viewers are encouraged to study thematic connections across mediums and
civilizations in galleries devoted, for example, to "Women and Children in
Antiquity," "Athletes and Competition" and "Dionysus and the Theater." A
room labeled "Stories of the Trojan War" includes copies of the Iliad and
the Odyssey, so viewers can read the passages depicted on the artworks in
question. 

For a museum that has only just opened as a stand-alone antiquities center,
the quality and quantity of objects demanded back by Greece and Italy could
seem deeply threatening. On a recent visit a reporter was able to identify
in almost every gallery objects that appear on the Italian and Greek lists,
ranging from a small stone statue of Tyche, the goddess of fortune, to a
pair of remarkable red-figure Attic vases with scenes of athletes, to a
painting-size fragment of a Pompeian fresco. 

Among the works sought by Italy is a marble ceremonial basin, or lekanis,
depicting in color - and surviving examples of painted stone are a rarity -
a scene from the Iliad. Ms. Wight described it as "the only piece of its
kind." 

The Greek and Italian claims have lent ammunition to archaeologists who say
that the Getty's collecting practices are an incentive to looters and have
erased the archaeological context of countless artifacts.

Mr. Brand counters that by bringing a bit of ancient Rome and Greece to
Southern California, the Getty has performed a great service to the public
and to scholars. 

"I think if you look at Marion and at the Getty Museum, I don't think you
could ever accuse us of not using objects to good ends," he said. 

http://www.nytimes.com/