[MSN] Antiquities Trial Fixes on Collectors ¹ Role

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New York Times, June 9, 2007

Antiquities Trial Fixes on Collectors¹ Role
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME, June 8 ‹ It was a ³sophisticated method of laundering,² a prosecution
witness testified on Friday in a trial courtroom here. Private collectors
would acquire looted artifacts and eventually donate them to museums, she
said.

The witness, Daniela Rizzo, an Italian archaeologist, specifically cited the
owners of four American antiquities collections.

None are on trial here. None have been legally charged with any wrongdoing.
Nor do Italian prosecutors contend that the collectors had evidence that
certain objects had been looted. Yet the prosecutors have clearly adopted a
strategy of calling attention to collectors, especially well-heeled
Americans, with the implicit message that every player in the global
antiquities trade is within their sights.

The actual trial defendants are Marion True, a former antiquities curator at
the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and Robert Hecht, an American
dealer in classical artifacts. Both are charged with trafficking in objects
that were illicitly excavated from Italian soil.

Dozens of witnesses have filed through the courtroom since the trial opened
in November 2005, but only this month did prosecutors fully turn their
sights on American antiquities collectors in court testimony. The tactic has
infuriated defense lawyers, whose objections became so heated on Friday that
Judge Gustavo Barbalinardo decided to suspend the proceedings until tempers
cooled. 

In her testimony Ms. Rizzo said that the ³very rich² private collectors
built collections that ³included objects that were undoubtedly looted from
Italy.² 

She cited the Texas oilmen Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt (who
sold their artifacts at auction in 1990 after their fortunes collapsed); the
New York diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman; the art philanthropist
Lawrence Fleischman and his wife, Barbara; and the financier Leon Levy and
his wife, Shelby White.

Objects from their collections went on display in major exhibitions,
³becoming known to the public and the scientific world, after which they
ended up in museums,² Ms. Rizzo said. ³It was a different, more
sophisticated method of laundering artifacts.²

Defense lawyers for Ms. True and Mr. Hecht repeatedly interrupted Ms.
Rizzo¹s testimony; Francesco Isolabella, a lawyer for Ms. True, objected
that it was beyond Ms. Rizzo¹s mandate to ³come up with inductive or
deductive theories.² Mr. Isolabella said that the archaeologist was making
³evaluations that only a prosecutor can make.²

³She should stick to identifying Etruscan vases,² Mr. Isolabella said.

Because they are not on trial, none of the collectors are represented in the
courtroom. Contacted through their offices, Nelson Bunker Hunt and Mr.
Tempelsman declined to comment on the trial or to be interviewed. Through a
spokesman, Ms. White declined to comment on the trial. (Her husband died in
2003.) In a telephone interview from New York, Ms. Fleischman said: ³It
seems like anyone can accuse anyone of anything without any proof. We
collected for the pure joy of the object.² She declined to comment further
on the trial. But she said that she and her husband, who died in 1997, never
suspected that they might be buying anything less than legitimate.

Ms. Fleishman, a former Getty trustee, and her husband donated or sold more
than 300 antiquities to the Getty. Italy¹s Culture Ministry is demanding
that the museum return a dozen of the Fleischman objects.

It seems inevitable that as prosecutors began investigating the passage of
objects from looted tombs in the Italian countryside to American
institutions, they would become interested in private donors, long the
lifeblood of the world¹s museums.

A report this year by the Association of Art Museum Directors, which
represents nearly 200 museums in the United States, Canada and Mexico, notes
that ³more than 90 percent of the art collections held in public trust by
American¹s art museums were donated by private individuals.²

Beyond altruism, the economic benefit for collectors in the United States is
a tax deduction equal to the current market value of the object. This
deduction can save the donor 25 to 50 percent of the object¹s value,
depending on what method is used. In return, museums short of funds can
aspire to top-rate works of art.

³There¹s every reason to think that a museum would bring an item it can¹t
afford to the attention of a collector, hoping for a donation,² said Patty
Gerstenblith, a law professor at DePaul University and president of the
Lawyers¹ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation.

At the same time, she said, ³it helps to distance the museum from a
questionable piece.² There is less risk of public disapproval should a
museum be forced to return a piece that arrived as a donation, she said.

For at least the past decade, though, Peter C. Marzio, director of the
Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and a past president of the Association of
Art Museum Directors, said, both collectors and museums have been conducting
³diligent provenance inquiries² on artifacts that change hands.

He cited an auction on Thursday at Sotheby¹s in New York where a
2,000-year-old bronze statue of Artemis sold for $28.6 million, a world
record for sculpture and for an antiquity.

³Provenance is what is driving prices up,² Mr. Marzio said. ³Provenance is
having enormous value.² The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo acquired
the Artemis from a Manhattan dealer in 1953, well before the adoption of a
1970 Unesco convention governing traffic in cultural property.

During a courtroom break, Mr. Hecht, the dealer on trial here, scoffed at
the notion of a collector like Ms. White having an economic incentive for
donating to a museum. ³The last thing Shelby Levy White needs is a tax
deduction,² Mr. Hecht said. She ³really liked and learned about every piece
she bought.² 

Running parallel to the trial is the Italian Culture Ministry¹s dogged
effort to lay claim to what it contends are looted objects in American
museums. Last year it negotiated the return of 21 antiquities from the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and 13 from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Talks with the Getty have faltered. Italy is seeking the return of 52
objects over all from that museum, among them a dozen donated by Ms.
Fleischman. So far the Getty has agreed to return 26 artifacts to Italy,
including 5 acquired from the Fleischmans and three pieces purchased from
Mr. Tempelsman.

In an interview Paolo Ferri, the trial prosecutor, asserted that American
collectors might one day find themselves at the defense table.

Once a verdict is delivered in the trial of Ms. True and Mr. Hecht, he said,
³I¹ll draw my conclusions.²



  
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