by Jason Felch
Rutelli hinted that it was just the beginning. "I expect that over the next few years, hundreds of other works stolen from our national patrimony and taken abroad will return to Italy," he told the Italian press, adding that hundreds of objects in England from the Robin Symes collection might soon follow. "Ours is not a nationalistic discourse. On the contrary: it is a universal one, because each national patrimony belongs to the world, and circulation cannot be left to illegal organizations."
From Rome, the exhibit traveled to Athens, where it was displayed with the Getty's golden wreath and other returned artifacts. After the exhibit ended, the Italian pieces were sent home for permanent display in the regional museums of Lazio, Campania, Apulia, Umbria, and Sicily—near where they were once wrenched out of underground tombs.
In December 2010, Getty conservators quietly disassembled the Aphrodite and packed it for return to Italy, where it arrived in early 2011. The statue will spend its remaining years alongside other prodigal treasures at a seventeenth-century Capuchin monastery that serves as a museum in Aidone, the town just outside the ruins of Morgantina.
The chase is finally over.
Epilogue: Beyond Ownership
AS IN A Greek tragedy, the Getty sowed the seeds of its own disgrace. For years it built an enviable collection of antiquities by turning a blind eye to their origins. Along the way, museum officials came to believe their own rationalizations and ignored the stark prophecies of people such as Arthur Hought on, who in the early 1980s had warned that "curatorial avarice" would someday trigger an international investigation and leave a stain on the Getty's name. When the day of reckoning came more than twenty years later, the Getty responded with hubris, then became mired in indecision. Unable to choose between saving its curator and saving its collection, the Getty wavered—and lost both.
Yet the controversy has had its redemptive effect. The Getty was forced to do something it had long avoided: pull back the veil of lies and obfuscation, go beyond "optical due diligence," and confront the truth about its past. In doing so, the chastened museum helped usher in an era of cultural exchange. The Getty's redemption came at a high cost, however. The museum lost forty of its most prized ancient objects, leaving the collection significantly diminished. But soon after they were returned, a remarkable series of long-term loans began to arrive from Italy.
The first came in the summer of 2009: the Chimera of Arezzo, a striking bronze sculpture of the legendary fire-breathing monster that bears the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent. For centuries, the slaying of the Chimera has been an allegory for culture's triumph over human nature, the victory of right over might. Courtesy of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence, the renowned Etruscan masterpiece was accompanied by the detailed story of its discovery, archaeological context, and ownership history—something lost for nearly all the objects in the Getty's permanent collection. The Chimera was found in 1553 by workers in Arezzo, east of Florence. A cache of small bronze figures found with it indicated they had been part of an offering to Tinia, the king of the Etruscan gods. The famed Medici family owned the piece before it was given to the Uffizi Palace in 1718 and the National Archaeological Museum of Florence in 1870. This was the type of coveted information that would never be available for the Aphrodite, the true identity and purpose of which remain a mystery to this day.
The Chimera loan was the first fruit of broad collaboration agreements Italy struck with the Getty, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum, and other institutions that returned a token number of their looted treasures. The arrangements carried enormous benefits for both sides. Museums received crowddrawing masterpieces of unimpeachable provenance. The Italians appeared magnanimous while showing off some of their most precious objects, many of which had been languishing in remote regional museums. Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri retired soon after the Getty deal was struck, but similar deals are likely to emerge as his successors press their case with museums in Europe, Japan, and Australia to which looted objects have been traced.
The agreements also appear to be achieving a much broader goal. Italian authorities have reported a marked decline in looting from archaeological sites. American museums have all but stopped purchasing recently looted Greek and Roman antiquities. Reforms made in the wake of the Getty scandal were consolidated by a changing of the guard in the American museum community. A generation of "grand acquisitors"—Thomas Hoving, Jiri Frel, Dietrich von Bothmer, and Cornelius Vermeule—passed away during the scandal, and the Met's Philippe de Montebello retired. They have been replaced by a younger cadre of more enlightened directors who, like Marion True, may have sinned in the past but eventually embraced reform. A similar evolution has begun in the antiquities market itself. The men who dominated the trade for decades—Robert Hecht, Giacomo Medici, Robin Symes, Gianfranco Becchina—were consumed by their legal battles, yielding to a younger generation of dealers who wrestled more openly with the ethics of the trade.
Whether these changes will take hold more broadly remains to be seen. Looting continues around the globe, and wealthy collectors in Asia, Russia, and the Middle East have quickly filled the void left by American museums in the antiquities market. Even in America, some museums appear not to have gotten the message. Even as the Getty scandal made international headlines, several other southern California museums were caught in a tax fraud scheme to accept donations of looted Southeast Asian artifacts. The machinations were jarringly similar to the one Frel had carried out at the Getty some two decades earlier.
Likewise, not all archaeologically rich countries have been as reasonable as Italy, which limited its demands to objects looted since the 1970 UNESCO Convention. In April 2010, Egyptian officials organized a conference of twenty-one countries to draw up a wish list of artifacts they wanted returned. Many of the sought-after pieces were taken generations ago under colonial rule or other ethically murky circumstances. Greece, meanwhile, revived its demands for the return of the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum. It was an old argument made fresh by the $200 million museum the Greek government opened at the base of the Acropolis in 2008. Some of these claims carry moral weight, but just as often they are driven by emotion and nationalistic impulses. Ultimately, they do little to address the scourge of modern looting.
As for the Getty, it appears unable to shake its founder's curse. Just as the organization emerged from the dark period of crisis marked by the fall of Barry Munitz and the conflagration over its antiquities collection, unrest returned. In 2009, the greatest recession in modern times forced the Getty to lay off veteran staff and once again curb its ambitions. In January 2010, museum director Michael Brand was pushed out after clashing over money with Getty Trust CEO James Wood—a sign that the Getty's unusual structure remains a nagging source of instability. Wood died unexpectedly in June 2010, leaving the world's richest arts organization for a time with no chief executive, no museum director, and a newly appointed board chairman to chart its uncertain future. It remains an organization still struggling to live up to its vast potential.
Marion True, meanwhile, remained stuck in the purgatory of the Italian judicial system until October 2010, when the statute of limitations expired on her remaining criminal charges. After five years of trial, True was excused without a verdict, leaving unresolved the question of her guilt or innocence. In truth, True's punishment has already been meted out—the destruction of her career and reputation, the unraveling of decades of work, and the return of dozens of objects she risked everything to acquire. True, at once the greatest sinner and the greatest champion of reform, has been made to pay for the crimes of American museums.
Like a heroine in a Greek tragedy, it took True's downfall to achieve the goal that guided much of her career. Her undoing forged a peace between collectors and archaeologists, museums and source countries. The new era she called for at Rutgers in 1998 is now within sight. I
t is one in which museums and countries alike will look beyond questions of ownership and embrace, as True said, the "sharing of cultural properties, rather than their exploitation as commodities."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
FURTHER READING
INDEX
Acknowledgments
This book would have been impossible without the help of numerous people.
First among them are our confidential sources, all of whom spoke with us at considerable personal risk because they believed the public had a right to know the truth.
We are grateful to the staff and leadership of the J. Paul Getty Trust, who cooperated with this project knowing it would not always put their institution in a favorable light. In particular, former museum director Michael Brand, Getty spokesman Ron Hartwig, and outside counsel Luis Li gave us ample time to make sure we got it right.
Beyond the Getty, Thomas and Nancy Hoving in New York City opened their home, their archives, and their formidable minds to us. Many of the scandals in this book were first uncovered by this duo some twenty years before we arrived, and their humor, energy, and endless generosity are deeply appreciated. Thomas Hoving remained a supporter until his death in December 2009. In Maryland, Arthur Houghton generously allowed us to spend days in his home reviewing his considerable archives, which proved to be an essential window into the early years at the Getty Museum.
In Italy, we are indebted to Livia Borghese for her translation, friendship, and patience as she sat through hours of legal hearings on our behalf, broken only by Robert Hecht's occasional arias or Giacomo Medici's frothing rants. Her smile opened doors in Rome, guided us through an uneasy quiet in Sicily, and helped us navigate the catacombs of Cerveteri.
In Athens, we were lucky to find not just a dogged fellow investigator but a friend, Nikolas Zirganos. He, too, welcomed us into his home and shared his wisdom from years on the trail of Greece's stolen patrimony.
Countless others helped us in ways large and small during our various trips across Europe looking for answers, and we thank them.
At the Los Angeles Times, we are indebted to our editor, Vernon Loeb, who pushed us to keep chasing Aphrodite when we thought we were done, as well as Dean Baquet, Marc Duvoisin, and Doug Frantz, who saw the potential of this story and championed our pursuit of it through trying times for the newspaper. We also thank Robin Fields and Louise Roug, who with Jason wrote the original articles about Barry Munitz's spending that started a three-year run of stories about the Getty. All but Marc have moved on from the Times but remain valued colleagues.
Our indefatigable early readers helped us understand where the manuscript resonated and where it fell flat, where we had failed to pick up threads and where we had unnecessarily buried the reader under mountains of facts. They were Sandy Tolan, a journalism professor and author of the best-selling book The Lemon Tree; an expert on the law who asked not to be identified but was both rigorous and thoughtful; and the husband-and-wife team of Paul Schnitt and Virginia Ellis, former Sacramento Bee business writer and former Los Angeles Times Sacramento bureau chief, respectively. Attorney Jonathan Kirsch, an accomplished author, helped craft our collaboration agreement, which, mercifully, was never invoked.
Finally, we salute our agent, Jay Mandel, at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, and the excellent team at our publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—editor in chief Andrea Schulz, who exhibited unflagging patience and optimism, as well as Lindsey Smith, Lisa Glover, Christina Morgan, and legal adviser David Eber. Our copy editor, Barbara Jatkola, was both patient and thorough. Any shortcomings of this book fall entirely on the shoulders of the authors.
OF COURSE, NO book would have been possible without the critical support and inspiration offered by our loved ones.
Jason thanks his wife, Anahi, whose love sustained this project for years, and Nicolas, whose birth marked its halfway point. Jason also thanks his grandfather, Dr. William C. Felch Sr., the family's first writer and a constant source of inspiration; his parents Will, Ginny, Carol, and Sue, and his sister, Kristin, who never stopped asking for updates; and Alfonso and Maria Carrillo, who were generous in so many ways.
Ralph thanks his father, Carl J. Frammolino, who inspired his career in journalism; his brother, Carl L. Frammolino, who is his best friend and was chief cheerleader during difficult moments of writing; his sisters, Janice and Kathy; and Julia Stenzel, who patiently let the creative process take precedent over plans for traveling through India. Finally, Ralph thanks the two most important people in the world to him, the ones who never stopped believing the book would come out—his daughters, Allyson and Anna. If this makes you proud, girls, it was worth it.
Notes
This book is the culmination of five years of reporting. Its origin was a series of investigative stories in the Los Angeles Times between 2005 and 2007. The articles revealed that the J. Paul Getty Museum had bought looted Greek and Roman antiquities from the black market while holding itself out as a model of reform. The series was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and provoked an international debate about the role of American museums in the illicit antiquities trade.
Given the limitations of newspapers, much of the important context for the Getty scandal was never explored in those articles. Three decades of evolving legal standards were blurred by hindsight, and several important questions remained unanswered. How much did museum officials know about the objects they were buying? How could such intelligent and sophisticated people follow a path that led to this scandal? And why didn't they heed the warnings? For those reasons, we continued our research between 2007 and 2010. The result is this account, which reconstructs the Getty scandal, tracing the crisis from its roots in the 1970s to its recent resolution.
American museums have a public mission, but in many ways they are secretive institutions. They conduct their business in private, and even the most basic facts about each acquisition—where it came from and how much the buyer paid for it—are rarely revealed. As a result, the public has very little idea of how these institutions are run and what values guide them. This book pierces that secrecy and provides an unparalleled view inside one of America's leading museums.
The backbone of this account is a trove of thousands of pages of confidential Getty records provided by half a dozen key sources at various levels of the institution. They include a confidential institutional history of the Getty as narrated by two generations of its leaders; a complete list of art purchased by the museum from 1954 to 2004, with the price paid for each piece; the private correspondence and contemporaneous handwritten notes of several top Getty officials; museum files on the contested antiquities and suspect dealers; and records detailing several internal investigations conducted over the years by various teams of Getty lawyers. These records were provided by sources who risked their careers and reputations for the public's right to know the truth. This account would not have been possible without them.
We also tapped other archives, both public and personal. Court records in Rome provided a road map of the illicit trade, captured in hundreds of pages of sworn depositions of dealers, looters, and Getty staff; original Carabinieri case files detailed decades of looting investigations; and the 650-page sentencing document for Giacomo Medici laid out the results of the decadelong Itali an investigation. The personal archives of former Getty acting antiquities curator Arthur Houghton and the late Thomas Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, were also particularly useful.
In time, the Getty itself opened up and gave us limited access to its institutional archives. Although most reportorial gems had been carefully excised by the Getty's lawyers, the archives nevertheless provided an essential context to understand the Getty's origins and evolution, a central subplot of the story.
But documents are like shards of an ancient vase—some dull, some beautiful, all lacking context. To bring these records together, we conducted thousands of hours of interviews with more tha
n three hundred people in the United States and Europe. They included virtually every central player in the drama (with the few key exceptions noted below). Some sat for hours and bared their souls; others answered reluctantly and only when presented with uncomfortable facts. Many requested anonymity, citing the ongoing criminal investigations into the events we describe. Before using information from anonymous sources, we carefully considered their motives and reliability.
The Getty generously made key staff members available for interviews, in particular former museum director Michael Brand, spokesman Ron Hartwig, and outside legal counsel Luis Li of Munger, Tolles & Olson of Los Angeles. Italian authorities also were generous with their time and records, in particular prosecutor Paolo Ferri; Judge Guglielmo Muntoni; Culture Ministry officials Maurizio Fiorilli and Giuseppe Proietti; investigators Maurizio Pellegrini and Daniela Rizzo; and Carabinieri art squad members Maximiliano Quagliarella, Angelo Ragusa, and Salvatore Morando. Antiquities dealers Giacomo Medici, Gianfranco Becchina, Frieda Tchakos, Robin Symes, and, in particular, Robert Hecht shared what they could about their exploits over the years.
Three key people were not available for interviews: J. Paul Getty, who died in 1976; Jiri Frel, the Getty's first antiquities curator, who died in Paris just as we were knocking on his door in Rome; and Marion True, the Getty's antiquities curator for two decades and a central character in the scandal.
Over five years of reporting, True declined more than a dozen interview requests, including several made through her attorneys in the United States and Italy. Shortly before our deadline, she agreed to participate in a written exchange for fact-checking purposes. She terminated the arrangement when the authors submitted a second round of questions. Nevertheless, her brief responses to our initial round of questions were helpful, and we thank her. Some of the gaps left by True's silence were bridged by the hundreds of pages of depositions and written statements she gave to Italian and Greek authorities; the single press interview she gave to a sympathetic writer for The New Yorker; her Getty correspondence and expense accounts; interviews with her friends and colleagues; and the lengthy investigations into her actions by the Getty, Italy, and Greece.