[MSN] Italians in hot pursuit of their looted antiques (The Medici Conspiracy)

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

Italians in hot pursuit of their looted antiques (Lat-WP)

The Medici Conspiracy
By Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini

Since last November, two well-heeled Americans have been on trial in Rome.
Marion True, a former curator of antiquities at the J Paul Getty Museum in
Los Angeles, and Robert E Hecht Jr, an American art dealer living in Paris,
are facing charges of conspiring to bring looted and smuggled antiquities
out of Italy and into the United States. 
During that time, and well before any judgment will be reached, the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has begun returning looted objects to
Italian ownership, and the Getty is negotiating similar action. 
Some museum professionals are complaining that the Italians (not to mention
the Greeks) have suddenly become very aggressive in pursuit of what they see
as their property, and are using the trial - and the threat of more to come
- as leverage to pry objects out of (mainly American) museums. 
But if the Italians are aggressive, it is only because they now have
evidence in abundance to prove what many archeologists have been arguing for
more than 30 years: 
The vast majority of classical antiquities that are sold at auction at
Bonhams, Christie's and Sotheby's; that make up most of the collections
formed in the US and elsewhere since World War II; that grace the world's
major museums; and that are traded on Madison Avenue, Bond Street and Quai
Voltaire, are smuggled loot. 
The True/Hecht trial is the culmination of events that began with a raid on
Italian art dealer Giacomo Medici's warehouse in Geneva in 1995. 
That, combined with documents from Sotheby's, resulted in his conviction in
December 2004, a prison sentence of 10 years and a fine of $12 million,
though he is free pending his appeal. 
Four thousand objects were seized in just this one warehouse, together with
35,000 documents and 3,600 photographs relating to 7,000 antiquities in all.

Based on this evidence, Italian experts calculated that 50 important tombs
had been looted. By comparison, a successful archeologist can expect to find
two important tombs in an entire career. 
In the course of the looting, some of the damage done by the tombaroli, or
tomb robbers, was shocking. Entire walls taken from a villa near Pompeii
were found in the warehouse. 
Color photographs seized in the raid proved that these walls had been hacked
to pieces - reduced to laptop-size chunks - for ease of smuggling. 
If tombaroli and middlemen are guilty of desecrating the world's cultural
heritage, so are those on the buying end of the looters' deals. By its
actions at least, the Metropolitan's administration has recently come to
acknowledge this. 
One object that the Met has returned to Italian ownership is the Euphronios
krater. The vase, purchased by the Met from Hecht in 1972, was the first
antiquity to sell for $1 million. 
That sale created the contemporary boom in the antiquities market and made
possible the recent opportunities for career tomb raiders. 
Thirty years ago, rumors swirled that the vase was likely looted. The
Italian government demanded its return, only to be told by the Met that the
evidence of looting was inconclusive. 
Even now, the Met's director claims - improbably - that the museum acted in
ignorance when it purchased the vase. 
A journal seized from Hecht shows that he paid Medici the equivalent of
about $350,000 for the krater, not so very different from the value put on
the vase by other museum professionals and by Sotheby's at the time the
acquisition was announced. 
There is no doubt that the price the Met paid was well over the market value
of the vase. 
An editorial in the newsletter of the Association for Field Archeology said
at the time: "As long as acquisition at any price is to be the credo of our
major collections, they will fail to serve the cause of knowledge and serve
only to incite resentment and encourage crime." 
It would be going too far to blame the Metropolitan Museum for all of
Hecht's and Medici's actions, let alone for what True may have done on
behalf of the Getty. 
But there is a real sense that in overpaying for the krater, the museum
helped establish the climate in which dishonest dealers could thrive. 
We have been told that a number of tombaroli in Italy "went crazy" when they
heard the price that had been paid for the krater, and that they redoubled
their efforts to search out whatever loot they could find. 
Although the Met may have started the rot, it is a former Getty curator who
is now in the dock. With this in mind, we believe that there is a fitting
way to end this set of unfortunate events. 
Because the Met has agreed to return objects to Italy, and the Getty (and
other museums) are expected to follow suit, the Italians have already won
the argument. 
Therefore we believe that if True were to stop fighting her case and
cooperate with the Italians by telling them all she knows from her years of
acquiring antiquities, a deal would be possible, and that would be
preferable to continuing a degrading court spectacle in Rome. 
Whatever True's involvement, she would perform a public service. The
Italians are likely to discover new information that would help them and
others stem the illicit trade in antiquities, and the art world can move on.

Watson and Todeschini are co-authors of The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit
Journey of Looted Antiquities - From Italy's Tomb Raiders to the World's
Greatest Museums. 

http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/