[MSN] The University of Virginia Art Museum must explain the mystery of the Morgantina masks.

[Museum Security Network Mailing list]

Behind the masks
The University must explain the mystery of the Morgantina masks

In the spring of 1979, a young Italian antiquities dealer opened the trunk
of his sedan to reveal two pristine marble sculptures -- smiling faces,
supposedly those of the ancient goddesses, Demeter and Persephone. Giuseppe
Mascara, a former tomb raider and purveyor of misplaced antiquities, stared
at the acroliths for a while, letting his eyes brush over the exquisitely
etched surface, imagining the craftsmanship that produced such simple beauty
almost 2,500 years ago. As Mascara told prosecutors years later, the price
was more than he could afford. 

For the past five years, the University of Virginia Art Museum has displayed
the masks, which according to the New York Times are rumored to have been
stolen by tomb robbers from Morgantina, an ancient Greek outpost near the
small Sicilian town of Aidone. Now, decades after the masks disappeared from
Southern Italy, the Italian government wants them returned. Straightforward
as that seems, several important questions remain unanswered. The University
owes the public those answers. 

After 1979, the masks then made their way to Switzerland, where they
vanished into the illicit art underworld. They resurfaced again in the
London gallery of a suspected illegal art trafficker Robin Symes, who sold
the masks in 1980 to a wealthy New York diamond merchant and companion to
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Maurice Tempelman, for an estimated $1 million.
Apparently unaware of the masks' dubious past, Tempelman loaned his newly
acquired artifacts to museums around the world including the J. Paul Getty
Museum in Los Angeles. 

The simplest resolution to the matter -- returning the masks to the museum
in Morgantina -- isn't as simple as it sounds. After reading public
statements from both the University and Sicilian art authorities, the matter
becomes even more confusing, and even more shrouded in mystery. This week
the New York Times reported that University officials released a statement
thanking Italian authorities "for their support of the University of
Virginia's excavations at Morgantina, and we strongly endorse the return of
any antiquities that have been illegally removed from Morgantina." Bear in
mind that endorsing the return of goods and actually returning them are two
different things. 

The University Art Museum acknowledges that the masks are on loan from an
anonymous donor and that an agreement exists between the museum and the
unnamed donor that limits the loan to a period of five years, after which
the museum can do with the masks what it sees fit. The museum refuses to say
whether the masks will be returned to Italy after the loan agreement
expires. 

But were the masks really stolen? In a 2002 article in the American Journal
of Archaeology, University Professor Malcolm Bell, who directs excavations
in Morgantina, confirmed the masks were looted in 1979 and assured readers
that an attempt will be made to "recontextualize" the sculptures. One item
Bell omitted from his article was his encounter with the tomb raider
Giuseppe Mascara, whom he first met in 1968 met while honeymooning in
Morgantina. Alexander Stille wrote in his 2003 book "The Future of the Past"
that while visiting an excavation during his honeymoon, Bell, who was then a
graduate student, discovered Mascara and his "employees" stealing artifacts
from an unearthed tomb. The whole story reads like a Graham Greene novel. 

Too many questions remain unanswered. Even more, it seems, haven't been
asked. Who owns the masks? To whom do they rightly belong? Does the
University Art Museum plan to return the masks? And if not, why? Until the
public learns the truth, the circumstances surrounding the masks will
continue to arouse suspicion. 

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