Chasing Aphrodite

by Jason Felch

  The reflecting pool and garden of the Getty Villa, which first opened in 1974. It was extensively remodeled and reopened in 2006 as the home of the Getty Museum's world-class antiquities collection. Soon after, many of the Getty's prized objects on display there were returned to Italy.

  LEFT: A photo of the Getty Bronze soon after it was hauled out of the Adriatic Sea in the 1960s by Italian fishermen. The statue was buried in a cabbage field and smuggled out of Italy before resurfacing in Europe in the 1970s, when J. Paul Getty first saw it. RIGHT: The kouros, or statue of a young man. The Getty bought the marble Greek statue for nearly $10 million in 1985, believing it was authentic and had been looted recently from southern Italy. After a lengthy investigation, many at the Getty concluded the kouros was a fake. Today it remains on display, labeled, "Greek, about 530 BC or modern forgery."

  The Getty's Aphrodite, which the museum purchased in 1988 despite obvious signs it was looted. For the Italians, the towering figure became a symbol of cultural plunder fueled by American museums.

  Getty's first antiquities curator, Jiri Frel, sitting next to his prized acquisition, the Getty Bronze. J. Paul Getty never bought the statue, concerned that it had been smuggled out of Italy. Frel pursued the acquisition after Getty's death, and later embarked on a tax fraud scheme that brought thousands more illicit antiquities into the museum's collection.

  LEFT: John Walsh, former Getty Museum director, wrote a 1987 policy that allowed the Getty to appear prudent while continuing to acquire looted antiquities. Soon after, the Getty bought the Aphrodite for $18 million. RIGHT: Marion True became antiquities curator in 1986 after her predecessor resigned, warning that the museum would someday become a victim of its own "curatorial avarice."

  RIGHT: The Getty's statue of griffins attacking a fallen doe. It was purchased from diamond magnate Maurice Tempelsman in 1985, along with a statue of Apollo and a lekanis, or ceremonial basin, for $10.2 million.

  BELOW: Italian antiquities dealer Giacamo Medici in front of the griffins on a visit to the Getty Museum in the late 1980s. The museum continued to make payments on the griffins, Apollo, and lekanis after Medici told Getty officials he had bought the pieces from Italian looters. It was returned to Italy in 2007, after Medici was convicted for trafficking in looted antiquities.

  A seized Polaroid showing the Getty's marble griffins resting on Italian newspapers and in a car trunk, soon after being illegally excavated.

  The Getty's statue of Apollo, purchased with the griffins in 1985.

  A Polaroid seized from Giacomo Medici's warehouse showing the Apollo—on a pallet and in pieces—shortly after it was illegally excavated from southern Italy. The statue was returned in 2007.

  The Getty bought the golden funerary wreath for $1.15 million in 1993. Months earlier, Marion True was shown the wreath in a Swiss bank vault by a man she later concluded was an impostor. She was shaken by the experience and concluded the wreath was "too dangerous" for the Getty to purchase. A few months later, she changed her mind.

  Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, here in their Manhattan apartment, were close friends of Marion True. In 1996 the Getty acquired their antiquities collection, valued at $60 million. Days later, the Fleischmans gave the curator a personal loan to refinance her Greek vacation home. Both transactions came back to haunt True, leading to her 2005 indictment in Italy and her firing by the Getty.

  Deborah Gribbon, who succeeded John Walsh as Getty Museum director in 2000. Her determination to continue buying suspect antiquities angered the Italians. She resigned suddenly in 2004 after clashing with Getty Trust president Barry Munitz.

  Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri. His investigation of Italian antiquities trafficker Giacamo Medici uncovered a trove of Polaroids showing thousands of objects soon after they had been looted from Italian tombs and ruins. Ferri's investigators traced the objects to dozens of museums across Europe and the United States. The investigation led to the 2005 indictment of Getty antiquities curator Marion True in an Italian court.

  Former Getty antiquities curator Marion True pushes through a crowd of paparazzi outside a 2005 hearing in Rome, where she faced charges of conspiring to traffic in looted art. The case led to the return of hundreds of illicit antiquities to Italy and Greece from museums, dealers, and private collectors.

  PART III

  "AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE, WHAT FORGIVENESS?"

  15. TROUBLESOME DOCUMENTS

  ON OCTOBER 17, 2000, an outside lawyer for the Getty received an alarming inquiry from an acquaintance at the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. Would he be representing the Getty in the Italian criminal investigation into looted antiquities?

  What investigation? asked Richard Martin, a partner in the Manhattan firm Heller Ehrman. His source explained that Paolo Ferri, a magistrate in Rome, was asking the U.S. attorney's office to subpoena all Getty documents related to eleven antiquities the museum had bought while Marion True was curator. Ferri was looking for proof to support the seizure and return of the items, which he claimed were looted. He also wanted to interview True.

  News of the investigation blind-sided the Getty's attorneys. They had never heard of Ferri and knew nothing about his investigation. It was not surprising, however, that the U.S. attorney's office assumed that Martin would be representing the Getty in the case. He had powerful friends in both the American and Ital ian legal establishments and had been advising the Getty about a lengthy dispute with Italy over the museum's acquisition of a painting.

  Martin had started his legal career as a highly regarded assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York, where he'd helped another assistant U.S. attorney, Louis Freeh (the future director of the FBI), and his boss, Rudy Giuliani (the future mayor of New York City), bring a massive Sicilian drug ring to trial. During the famed "Pizza Connection" case, one of the most complex Mafia prosecutions in U.S. history, Martin had forged close alliances with Italian authorities, particularly anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, who was later assassinated in a spectacular car bombing. After winning convictions in the case, Martin had landed a post at the American embassy in Rome, where he had handled international judicial assistance requests like the one now targeting the Getty.

  The consequences of this request were immediately clear to Martin and the Getty's in-house attorneys. If it was honored by the U.S. attorney's office, it could expose the Getty to a vast Italian fishing expedition aimed at taking away some of the museum's art and impugning the reputation of its respected antiquities curator. That could not be allowed to happen. Martin asked his contact for a little time to try to clear up the apparent misunderstanding with Ferri directly. The U.S. attorney's office told Ferri that his request needed to be redrafted. It was overly broad and would have to be more focused if it was to be honored.

  Martin contacted the Getty's acting general counsel, Penny Cobey. An East Coast transplant, Cobey had assumed control of the legal department in September 1998 after the departure of Christine Steiner. Cobey was a tall redhead with a law degree and a Ph.D. in English literature, both from Harvard. But it was her background in real estate and construction law that had helped her secure the coveted job at the Getty, which needed to push the Getty Villa project through its final phases of construction.

  Cobey and Martin decided to learn more about the Italian investigation before notifying Munitz or the board. In conversations with Gribbon and True, Martin was soothing, explaining that the Italians probably didn't consider True a target; they just wanted to talk to her. True was not overly concerned. After all, she was on friendly terms with the Itali ans, including General Conforti, who had once welcomed her appearance at a conference with a VIP escort of Carabinieri and a bouquet of flowers in her hotel room.

  As museum staff began researching the eleven objects, Martin suggested that the Getty hire his colleague Francesco Isolabella, a debonair young criminal defense attorney from Milan, to represent the Getty and True in Italian court. At the time, there was no reason to think that
the interests of True and the Getty would diverge. Martin and Isolabella set up a meeting with Ferri in Rome with little idea what to expect.

  AT FERRI'S SMALL office on December 11, 2000, the greetings were warm. But after the visitors sat down across the desk from Ferri, the prosecutor was blunt. He believed that True was part of a criminal conspiracy that was bleeding Italy of its cultural artifacts. That belief was based on a lengthy investigation of Giacomo Medici, Robert Hecht, and other antiquities dealers from whom he had seized documents directly implicating the Getty curator. Ferri said that since his request to interview True, the investigation had grown to include forty-two objects traced from Medici's Polaroids to the Getty Museum. Surely, True must have known that such objects were recent finds and thus illegal. They had no established provenance predating 1939 and had never been published or publicly exhibited. Ferri urged the Getty to cooperate in his case against True. If the museum presented itself as a victim of her excesses, he said, it would save face during her eventual trial.

  Ferri was, as Italians say, putting "salt on the tail," testing the Getty to see how far it would go to protect True. If he could squeeze True for information, he could gain additional legal ammunition against Medici and Hecht, his primary targets.

  Speaking in fluent Italian, Martin assured Ferri that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding. He urged Ferri to go to Los Angeles to talk directly to True, whom he would find to be cooperative and forthright. In the meantime, the Getty would happily give the prosecutor the documents he'd asked for; there was no need for a formal subpoena.

  During several follow-up meetings, Ferri softened. He would reconsider charges against True if he could gain her cooperation under oath. Martin agreed, and they set a date in June 2001 for Ferri to go to Los Angeles to depose the curator. Giuseppe Proietti, a seni or Ministry of Culture official, would accompany Ferri to talk about potential cultural cooperation with the Getty.

  Martin left convinced that the prosecutor was sending a message: return the contested objects, and True would go free.

  THE FORTY-TWO objects that Ferri had identified included some of the best in the Getty's collection. There was the statue of Apollo, the marble basin, and the griffins from Maurice Tempelsman; several of the Getty's best vases; the bronze candelabrum and tripod; and a few prominent marble statues. The Getty had spent some $44 million to acquire the objects over the years. Given their rarity, most were priceless.

  True had been involved in the acquisition of thirty-two of them. The rest had been recommended by Jiri Frel or Arthur Houghton or were donations. Most had been bought from Robin Symes, Robert Hecht, Frieda Tchakos, or Christoph Leon. Nine had come from the Fleischman collection, an ominous sign now that Barbara Fleischman was on the board. Thankfully, neither the Aphrodite nor the Getty Bronze was mentioned.

  Martin and Cobey kept the Itali an situation close to the vest as they tried to wrap their heads around the problem. Only True, Gribbon, and a few other seni or museum people knew. Munitz didn't find out until two months later, when his chief of staff, Jill Murphy, told him.

  Murphy, in her early thirties, had a sharp mind and a sharper tongue. She had been plucked from obscurity by Munitz a few years earlier while waiting tables at the Jammin' Salmon, a Sacramento restaurant. At the time, she was an undergraduate at Sacramento State University, active in student government, and twenty dollars away from flat broke.

  When Munitz, then Cal State system chancellor, walked into the empty restaurant with the California budget director, Murphy recognized him immediately. After the budget director excused himself to go to the bathroom, Murphy set down the water glasses and launched into a scathing critique of Munitz's budget plan, which had been responsible for immensely unpopular tuition increases. Impressed, the chancellor asked her to keep in touch, and within a year he hired her to work on a task force at Cal State headquarters in Long Beach. Within five years, Murphy was among his most loyal staffers and followed him to the Getty. She saw herself as a champion of the working class and bridled at the Getty's culture of entitlement. She had no arts background and limited administrative experience, but she quickly became the Getty's second most powerful figure—Munitz's eyes, ears, and, more often than not, voice.

  She had been out of the office recovering from tonsil surgery when the Italian problem began to mushroom. Back at the Getty one day to pick up her mail, she stopped by Gribbon's office to say hello.

  "We have a problem," Gribbon said, looking up from her desk, worried. "A big problem. It's the antiquities issue."

  "What antiquities issue? Why don't I know what you're talking about?"

  "Marion is being investigated by an Italian prosecutor. He's accusing her of knowingly buying looted art. We had a lawyer talk to the prosecutor, and it sounds serious."

  "What! When did you learn about this?"

  "We've been handling it, but it has gotten more serious. You need to tell Barry."

  Murphy immediately called Munitz.

  "What do you mean we have a problem?" Munitz said. "I don't want to know we have a problem. I want to know what the problem is, what the implications are, and what we should do about it. Get me answers."

  Murphy went to Cobey, but the lawyer hemmed and hawed, saying they were still studying the issue. So Murphy called Martin. "Dick, here's what we need to understand," she said, barely keeping panic out of her voice. "How serious is this? Is she going to be indicted?"

  MARTIN'S ANSWER ARRIVED on January 30, 2001, in the form of a confidential memo to Munitz. It wasn't good news. Based on documents Ferri had seized from Medici and others, the prosecutor had "ample evidence" to prove that a conspiracy existed, Martin wrote. And although Ferri couldn't prove that True knew she was buying looted antiquities, it would take very little to connect True to the alleged scheme, since she had been a regular customer of the suspect dealers for years.

  "The prosecutor believes that Dr. True knew, or should have known, that many objects acquired by the Getty were illegally excavated from Italy," the memo said. Recently, True herself had said publicly that antiquities without a provenance were likely, if not certainly, illicit, Martin noted, referring to her Denver speech.

  Even more "troublesome," Martin added, was what had been revealed in a hasty review of the antiquities files by Cobey and him. There were letters between True and Hecht and True and Medici in which looted objects were openly discussed. In these letters, Martin noted, True did not raise any objection to "the plain suggestion that the Getty would be interested in such items."

  The lawyers also had found a number of Polaroids of objects offered by the dealers. "Unfortunately, the Polaroids look very similar to the Polaroid pictures which were seized from Medici's offices, a small portion of which are now posted on the Carabinieri Website ... To the extent they show objects in a state of disrepair or in a location from which they may have been excavated, they would provide additional evidence that the dealers were trafficking in illegal objects," Martin explained.

  Further, for many of the Greek and Roman antiquities in question, the Getty had listed Switzerland or Great Britain as the country of origin on U.S. customs forms. Obviously, that was where the objects had been purchased, not found. The misrepresentations could lead to the seizure and possible forfeiture of the objects, as had happened in the Steinhardt case. Martin believed that the five-year statute of limitations had expired for such charges, but the false statements could add weight to Ferri's overall theory of conspiracy, he suggested.

  The implications were grim. True was much more deeply involved than the attorneys had first believed. And because she refused to provide the written "confession" Ferri was demanding, her indictment was all but certain. A criminal trial in Italy "would be a disaster for her reputation and that of the Getty," Martin wrote, "and would prolong for years the public airing of these issues." Clearly, Ferri was trying to drive a wedge between True and the Getty. There would be a "great advantage" to the Getty and True maintaining a common defense, Mart
in advised.

  Ferri clearly didn't understand the Getty's unusual organizational structure, in which the museum was just one part of the Getty Trust. When the prosecutor had asked for "J. Paul Getty Trust documents" related to the contested objects, he had unwittingly left the Getty ample wiggle room. Interpreted as narrowly as possible, Ferri's request didn't obligate the Getty to turn over anything from the files in the museum, which was arguably a different entity from the trust. And the fact that Ferri had made his request orally meant that there would be no legal consequences if the Getty didn't fully comply.

  U.S. government officials wouldn't be so casual. Martin warned that a formal subpoena "prepared by a competent US Attorney's Office would almost certainly be more detailed and specific than the prosecutor's requests, and could well require the production of documents which we would rather not provide. In contrast, if instead [we] continue to cooperate with the prosecutor voluntarily, we can proceed under our own interpretation of the prosecutor's requests ... arguing they demonstrate the absence of any possible criminal claim against Dr. True."

  Once again, the Getty found itself trying to cover up what the antiquities department had been doing.

  ALTHOUGH THE APHRODITE was not on Ferri's list, his confrontation with True at the Villa Giulia in 1999 made it obvious that the Italians were still after it. Martin and Cobey decided that they needed to broaden their internal review, starting with the statue.

  Cobey knew something about the statue's controversial past, and she had come across Arthur Houghton's letter of resignation, which spelled out the long history of problems in the antiquities department. The museum staff had always seemed blasé when asked about improprieties. Walsh himself had once fondly referred to Hecht as "an old pirate from way back." Now, in the wake of Martin's memo, the staff's responses were more guarded. Gribbon was tightlipped about the Aphrodite and chose her words carefully. True responded similarly when Cobey finally sat down with her to discuss the statue.