[MSN] How is the Getty Museum different from Enron? The Getty is one of several museums that have been accused of systematically acquiring stolen antiquities.

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How is the Getty Museum different from Enron?
Posted by jmcaddel January 26, 2008 15:33PM

It's not a trick question. There may be little difference at all. The Getty
is one of several museums that have been accused of systematically acquiring
stolen antiquities. (The Getty last year agreed to return forty disputed
works to the Italian government.) In today's New York Times, an article
states that staffers at two other LA-area museums knowingly engaged with
smugglers wishing to sell antiquities to the museums.

But there's one difference I see. The Enron spectacle played out on the
front pages of the nation's newspapers. Today's Times article led off the
Arts section. The Enron conspirators received sentences of twenty years or
more in prison. By contrast, there seems to be little appetite to "make an
example" of those associated with trafficking in smuggled artworks (charges
were dismissed against the main figure in the Getty case, though other
charged remain open).

Why the double standard? Why is buying smuggled artwork less odious than
defrauding shareholders? Are curators somehow too classy to engage in
criminal behavior?

Or is that no one cares about fraud in the narrow niche called the art
world?

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