[MSN] Italy Has Regained Many Stolen Antiquities, but Its Talks With the Getty Stall

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

November 9, 2006
Italy Has Regained Many Stolen Antiquities, but Its Talks With the Getty
Stall 
By HUGH EAKIN and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME, Nov. 8 - A year after putting an American museum curator on trial on
charges of acquiring antiquities illegally, the Italian government has had
some impressive results. Relying on court evidence and aggressive public
diplomacy, it has persuaded the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, to surrender some of their finest artifacts. And ancient
artworks at other museums are now firmly in Italy's sights. 

Yet negotiations have stalled with the very institution that has been
Italy's biggest target: the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, whose
former curator, Marion True, is being tried in Rome. (The proceedings resume
on Friday.) 

Negotiations with the Getty have been "disappointing," the Italian culture
minister, Francesco Rutelli, said in an interview on Wednesday. "I don't
think they understand the gravity of the situation," he said. "You have a
major museum, and it is exhibiting dozens of stolen artifacts." 

At issue are 52 works in the Getty's collection that Italy says were
illegally excavated and spirited out of the country. People close to the
negotiations, speaking on condition of anonymity out of concern that their
remarks could arouse personal antagonism and jeopardize the talks, say the
Getty has made it clear that it is prepared to return about two dozen
objects on the list. They add that the Italian government has struck 6 more
from the original list of 52 because the evidence does not point
definitively to an Italian provenance. 

Yet the talks have bogged down in recent weeks as a dispute has deepened
over other important pieces on the list, including a rare fifth-century B.C.
limestone statue of a Greek deity, possibly Aphrodite, acquired by the Getty
in 1988; and a fourth-century B.C. bronze statue of a heroic youth sometimes
attributed to the Greek sculptor Lysippos, acquired in 1977. 

Michael Brand, director of the Getty Museum, declined to specify which
objects were in dispute or to supply specific numbers. "It's fair to say
there are some objects we both agree that will go back to Italy, and some we
both agree won't," he said in a telephone interview. "It's all the stuff in
the middle that is the problem."

Those works pose complicated questions for the museum as it tries to resolve
the dispute with Italy without lowering the bar of proof that it will demand
before returning a priceless antiquity. 

Many of the works on which the two sides agree can be traced to the Italian
art dealer Giacomo Medici, who was convicted on smuggling conspiracy charges
in 2004, and are pictured in confiscated photographs that indicate that they
were clandestinely dug up in Italy. 

By contrast, the Aphrodite sculpture, whose origin has been contested for
many years, was never handled by Mr. Medici, and there are no photographs
indicating it was excavated from an Italian site. 

The Getty bought the sculpture for a reported $18 million from Robin Symes,
a London dealer. According to court records, Mr. Symes had acquired it in
Lugano, Switzerland, from a Sicilian named Renzo Canavesi, who provided a
document stating that it had been privately owned since 1939. In 2001 Mr.
Canavesi was convicted in Sicily of having illegally exported the sculpture
with false papers, but the conviction was overturned two years later. 

Citing accounts from Sicilian tomb robbers, the Italian police have long
argued that the sculpture was dug up at Morgantina, an important ancient
site in central Sicily, the same origin given in the Italian Culture
Ministry's claim. But Malcolm Bell III, an archaeologist who has directed a
dig at Morgantina for many years, says there is no scholarly evidence to
suggest that the statue came from there. 

In 1998 an Italian stone analysis of the Aphrodite concluded that it closely
resembled stone found in parts of central-western Sicily, although it did
not pinpoint a precise location. Getty officials point out that they
informed the Italian government of its acquisition at the time of purchase,
and no Italian claim was forthcoming. They also argue that the same kind of
limestone might be found in other parts of the Mediterranean. 

The bronze statue, which the Getty bought from a dealer in London for around
$4 million, was discovered by Italian fishermen in the Adriatic near the
Italian town of Fano in 1964. Although it was passed on to the international
art market through Italy, it is unclear whether Italian patrimony laws apply
to it.

"It was found in international waters, which is a whole different story,"
Mr. Brand said.

Still, because of their price and rarity, both the bronze and the Aphrodite
have become popular symbols in Italy of the Getty's appetite for their
country's antiquities. They are often referred to as the Venus of Morgantina
and the Fano Bronze. Their return could carry far more importance than any
number of Greek vases that were sold by Mr. Medici, objects that are already
plentiful in Italian museums.

More than any other major American collecting museum, the Getty has adopted
tough standards to minimize the possibility of buying or accepting looted
antiquities.

Last month the museum approved new measures to screen out any item whose
documented provenance does not stretch back at least to 1970, the year that
Unesco adopted a convention prohibiting the illicit circulation of cultural
property. Mr. Brand said the new rules would make it much more difficult for
the museum to buy antiquities.

Despite the negative light that the Rome trial has thrown on the collecting
habits of American museums, other institutions, including the Met, have
resisted adopting similar acquisition standards.

The Getty has also returned several pieces to Italy, conceding that they
might have a murky past. 

Yet as Ms. True's trial resumes in Rome, the full complexity of the Getty's
predicament is being thrown into relief. 

Officially, the Culture Ministry's claim to the 52 works is utterly separate
from the trial, and any accord reached to return the objects would be
independent of its outcome. But the Culture Ministry is also a civil party
to the case against Ms. True, and there is no doubt that the trial has added
to its leverage as it seeks to obtain some of the Getty's most prized works.


A trial hearing on Oct. 18, for example, was devoted to police testimony
suggesting that the Aphrodite sculpture was dug up at Morgantina. Shortly
after that hearing, Mr. Rutelli, the culture minister, suggested that the
Getty's "room to maneuver is narrowing" in negotiations with Italy.

For Getty officials, the linkage involves elaborate calculations about just
how returning certain objects might affect the outcome of the trial. "There
are objects we might have come to some sort of understanding about in our
discussion, but there is also the legal discussion," Mr. Brand said. "What
does it mean if a piece doesn't go back? What does it mean if it does?"

But he said he remained optimistic that the differences could be worked out,
and emphasized that the Getty board was committed to resolving the dispute
as soon as possible. 

Mr. Rutelli, on the other hand, said Wednesday that he was "more
pessimistic" than he had been in the past. 

"It would not be a small thing" if the talks broke down, he said. "Until
now, we have negotiated out of the spotlight, but the spotlights could light
up." 

Hugh Eakin reported from New York, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.

http://www.nytimes.com/