Chasing Aphrodite

by Jason Felch

[>] Williams laid out: This account of the Getty Trust's conception is drawn largely from interviews with Harold Williams and from the trust's archives, which include the original proposal from Otto Wittmann and other key documents. The Getty's unusual structure—having a museum director who reported to the CEO of the trust—would prove to be a fateful choice, as successive generations clashed over their respective roles.

  [>] Arthur Houghton III: Biographical details about Houghton are from Houghton's résumé, public records, and interviews with former Getty officials. Given his unusual background, many suspected that Houghton had been—or perhaps still was—an employee of the CIA. Houghton did little to dispel the rumor, and the story grew into a tall tale about the agency having dispatched Houghton to the Getty to keep an eye on Frel, a suspected Communist spy. Neither was true. Houghton had worked briefly in the State Department's bureau of intelligence and had close friends at the CIA, but he was never a spy.

  He began collecting: Much of this chapter is taken from confidential Getty records and hundreds of pages of detailed notes that Houghton kept of his activities in the Getty's antiquities department. Thanks to his State Department training, Houghton's remarkable diary of his daily life often recounts verbatim conversations and detailed descriptions of meetings and events. Confidential Getty records, including attorney Bruce Bevan's investigation of Houghton's allegations against Frel, and interviews with several former Getty officials, including Williams and John Walsh, confirmed and expanded on these events.

  [>] young German secretary: When asked about Houghton's account, Renate Dolin told the authors that she was unaware of the donation scheme. "Whatever I typed was dictated to me. He [Frel] would give me papers to type and dictate letters to me, and I would just type it. I was really not knowledgeable about what it meant."

  [>] Marit Jentoft-Nilsen: Jentoft-Nilsen died in January 2005, before the authors had an opportunity to contact her. A member of her family provided the authors with hundreds of pages of her personal records from her time at the Getty that verify much of Houghton's account and add new details.

  [>] courtesy of a major dealer: The dealer was Robin Symes, according to Houghton's notes.

  "massive cash payments": According to Houghton's notes, Mayo told Houghton about the payments over dinner on June 24, 1983. Attorney Bruce Bevan also described the alleged payments in a confidential memo to Harold Williams dated May 1984: "She told Houghton that she had seen or knew of massive cash payments by Summa [Gallery] to Frel and that Bruce McNall of Summa was a guarantor of the note on Frel's house. Ms. Mayo has refused to discuss the matter with me." In the authors' interview with Mayo, who later became antiquities curator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, she denied acting as a conduit for payments to Frel and recalled confronting Houghton about the story.

  The dealers hosted: The description of the reception at the Kimbell is from interviews with McNall, a former Getty official, and other participants, as well as Houghton's notes.

  46 a collection of ancient amber: The actual and claimed values of the McLendon donation are detailed in Houghton's correspondence with McNall over the IRS investigation, interviews with McNall and a former Getty official, and Houghton's notes, which include this passage: "McNall said that the McLendon IRS settlement involved McLendon's acceptance of IRS' judgment that the material he had bought had been vastly over-valued, was worth only $1.5 million rather than the very high figure he had placed on it (McNall said 'over $20 million'), and that he had had to return $2.1 million to IRS. McLendon had then demanded reimbursement from McNall, with threat of going to IRS with the full story if McNall did not pay. McNall said he [Frel] thinks he has not been implicated now, although he [Frel] had arranged the transfer of the McLendon material to the Getty Museum, falsifying the appraisals as having been given by Fritz Bürki."

  his legal memo in hand: Based on a copy of the June 1983 legal memo and interviews with a former Getty official. Houghton's personal attorney was his half brother Peter P. Gates.

  [>] several other Getty donors: This account, contained in Houghton's notes and subsequent documents from an internal investigation, was later confirmed by a senior IRS investigator interviewed by the authors. The IRS investigation never resulted in charges because Frel left the country before the full scope of the scheme came to light, and proving intent would have been difficult, the investigator said.

  [>] "You have no idea": Frel's comment would prove prescient when, in 2008, IRS and other federal officials raided four southern California museums while investigating a similar donation scheme, this one involving looted Southeast Asian antiquities. At least one of the players in the 2008 scheme was also involved in Frel's donation scheme at the Getty. The scope of the problem became clear when the Los Angeles Times did an analysis of IRS art donation records. American art donors claim nearly $1 billion in tax write-offs every year, the records show. Over the past twenty years, the IRS has checked only a handful of these donations, but more than half were found to have been appraised at nearly double their actual value.

  [>] "Firi's wife smuggled it": Houghton's notes cite a December 1983 conversation with Faya Causey about the Egyptian head: "I asked if she had Customs invoice for it; she said no, she had not reported it to Customs, simply walked it in." Houghton's notes also say that he later told Frel that he would not present the piece for acquisition because of the facts that "it had no Customs clearance, that it was an object which could not be presented—and that if it were bought it would have illegally entered the museum, making both him and the museum vulnerable to a charge of willful felony." Causey, now at the National Gallery of Art, denied the account. "It's not true," she said. "I didn't carry stuff in, not with two kids."

  at each other's throats: Jentoft-Nilsen's personal records and interviews with a family member and a former Getty official.

  The question of his personal gain: Getty officials did not acknowledge the reasons for Frel's departure until four years later, in 1987, when Thomas Hoving and Geraldine Norman exposed the tax fraud scheme in their article "Huge Tax Fraud Uncovered at Getty Museum." Even then, Getty officials insisted that Frel had been allowed to stay on the Getty payroll because no evidence had appeared to suggest that he had benefited personally from his activities. This was not true. In addition to the reports of "massive cash payments," several reports had emerged that Frel was accepting "commissions" from antiquities dealers while on the Getty payroll. For example, in 1984 Williams was told that Frel had requested a $500,000 kickback in exchange for convincing the Getty to buy a number of Roman bronzes. In February 1985, Houghton informed Walsh in a memo that Frel had received a $10,000 commission for assisting in the sale of a $200,000 statue of Venus to Fred Richmond, a former New York congressman who had lost his seat after pleading guilty to tax evasion and marijuana possession in 1982. (Richmond served nine months in prison.) The Venus was jointly owned by Robert Hecht, Jonathan Rosen, and Hydra Gallery, the Swiss front company for Giacomo Medici, who ultimately paid Frel, according to Houghton's memo to Walsh. "This has been going on for years," the memo concluded.

  51 He had begun: Confirmed in interviews with Williams.

  the fate of Getty Oil: See Thomas Petzinger Jr., Oil and Honor: The Texaco-Pennzoil Wars (Putnam, 1987).

  [>] They confronted him: Houghton's notes give the date of the meeting and Frel's subsequent account of it to Houghton. See also Hoving and Norman, "Huge Tax Fraud Uncovered at Getty Museum."

  Bevan's investigation yielded: Bevan recounted his investigation in a detailed confidential memo to Williams dated May 10, 1984.

  [>] a cunning gamesman: Petzinger, Oil and Honor.

  It was projected: The costs of the Getty Center escalated precipitously over the years. In 1983, when the trust first announced plans for the construction project, it was projected to cost just $100 million and expected to be completed by 1987. A Getty press release from 1991 estimated the cost at $390 million. By the time of its opening in 1997, the cost of the Getty Center ha
d exceeded $1 billion. The Getty Villa renovation project was beset by similar delays and cost overruns.

  [>] The issue was sensitive: Williams has denied any wrongdoing, saying that there was no need to notify the board or the IRS. "It was a phony transaction that had to be undone," he told the authors.

  4: WORTH THE PRICE

  [>] Sitting in the Getty's: Details about the kouros are from Houghton's notes, confidential acquisition reports provided to the Getty board, scientific analysis from Getty conservation reports, and interviews with Jerry Podany.

  only a dozen: See Gisela Richter's landmark study, Kouroi: Archaic Greek Youths; A Study of the Development of the Kouros Type in Greek Sculpture (Phaidon, 1970).

  58 the trustees gathered: Thomas Hoving, False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes (Simon & Schuster, 1996), 279–310.

  Zeri's denunciation: The lengthy internal debate over the legal status and authenticity of the kouros is taken from various confidential Getty records, including Bruce Bevan's legal memo to Getty general counsel Barbara Capodieci in July 1984; Houghton's notes; and interviews with Thomas Hoving, John Walsh, Harold Williams, Burton Fredericksen, and other former Getty officials.

  [>] were being denounced: Houghlon's notes show that he privately obtained a copy of a memo from the 1982 annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America's Committee on Professional Responsibilities, in which the Getty's collecting policies were denounced.

  a series of memos: They include memos on November 9, 1983, regarding criticism from the archaeological community of the Getty's acquisition policy, which Houghton said "need not be given overdue weight in determining what we acquire"; on November 23, 1983, regarding the kouros; on November 29, 1983, regarding the potential fallout from acquiring the kouros; on January 20, 1984, regarding the possibility of collecting antiquities from the Near East, in which, Houghton noted, "clandestine excavations will continue, new objects of both greater and lesser importance will appear on the market, and the likelihood of any single new buyer substantially affecting this process will probably not be high"; on April 3, 1984, regarding the National Stolen Property Act, in which Houghton informed Walsh that U.S. Customs Service officials would enforce the 1977 McClain decision making illegally exported objects stolen property under U.S. law (see next note); on May 24, 1984, regarding the provenance policy of other American museums, in which Houghton notes that other museums were concerned that they not be "seen to encourage" looting while at the same time not be "so restrictive as to preclude the acquisition of objects important to their collections"; and on September 27, 1984, a lengthy confidential discussion titled "Ethics and the Acquisition of Antiquities." The last memo is perhaps the best articulation of a view that guided American museums for decades and ultimately led to the international scandal. Ironically, Houghton at the time was a member of the State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee, whose task was to consider requests from foreign governments for U.S. restrictions on the importation of antiquities.

  [>] a 1977 case: United States v. McClain established an important legal precedent: dealing in objects taken from a country with a clearly established ownership law would be considered the equivalent of trafficking in stolen property under the National Stolen Property Act. In this case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the conviction of American art dealers who knowingly sold Mexican antiquities protected under Mexico's cultural property law, which declared undiscovered antiquities the property of the state. The appellate decision was legally binding only in the Fifth Circuit but suggested that other courts might consider the practice of buying illegally excavated or exported antiquities a violation of the National Stolen Property Act. Not until the conviction of Manhattan art dealer Frederick Schultz in 2002 (United States v. Schultz) did the "McClain doctrine" formally take root in New York, the heart of the American antiquities trade.

  "The reality is": This stark assessment, which Houghion's notes show was widely discussed inside the Getty from as early as April 1984, is one of several indications that American museum officials were well aware that they were buying recently looted objects, a charge they vehemently deny to this day.

  62 a geochemist: Stanley Margolis, a professor of geology at the University of California, Davis, described his process and results in "Authenticating Ancient Marble Sculpture," Scientific American, June 1989, as well as in internal Getty technical reports.

  One expert on classical: Professor Evelyn Harrison cautioned the young museum against hubris: "At this stage of the development of the Getty collection of classical sculpture, I wonder whether the loss of a spectacular acquisition to a European competitor (assuming that the kouros is authentic and truly beautiful) would do the reputation of the museum as much harm as would be done by the addition of another piece which is either of morally dubious provenance, like the 'Getty Bronze' or of questionable authenticity ... There are so many fine and important pieces in the collection that it seems too bad to let them be overshadowed in this fashion." Her prescient advice was ignored.

  [>] "They read the technical": Cornelius Vermeule's phone conversation with John Walsh is described in Walsh's confidential memo to file dated August 9, 1984.

  Walsh then contacted: Walsh's conversation with von Bothmer is described in Walsh's confidential note to file dated August 15, 1984: "He has talked with Becchina, who assured him that 'you can exclude Greece' as its place of origin, meaning modern Greece, and that he should 'pay no attention to the documentation, since it will not help you.' Von Bothmer takes this to indicate Magna Graecia, specifically Sicily." Also, Houghton's memo to Walsh dated March 5, 1986, makes clear that Getty officials knew that Gianfranco Becchina trafficked in looted art and notes that von Bothmer "has spoken many times to others about his conviction that the kouros was excavated recently, at Mozia, an island off Sicily's western coast."

  [>] learned about the interview: Houghton's notes describe True's role and detail the Getty's hurried efforts to find a translation of Zeri's remarks.

  In talks with the Getty: The Tempelsman negotiations are based on Houghton's notes and his October 10, 1984, report to Walsh.

  [>] an Italian middleman: Biographical details about Giacomo Medici are from Italian court records and interviews with Medici, Robert Hecht, Frieda Tchakos, and former Getty officials.

  [>] Inside the Getty: Interviews with two former Getty officials.

  Houghton had once made: Houghton's notes show that he visited Medici's Geneva warehouse in February 1984. During the visit, Medici and an associate also said they "used English sales to give good provenance to material they wanted to sell later." Medici explained to Houghion that he would have someone else put one of his objects up for auction, then buy it himself. In this way, objects were "washed through Sothebys [sic]."

  Houghton detailed his discovery: Houghton's memo to Gribbon dated October 24, 1985.

  [>] made a surprising announcement: Walsh's July 1, 1985, memo to museum staff. He also copied the staff of the Getty Trust.

  Gianfranco Becchina: Anti-Mafia law enforcement authorities in Sicily allege that Becchina has ties to the Sicilian Mafia. Specifically, one Mafia turncoat described Becchina as what is known in the Cosa Nostra as "a disposizione" —a friend of the family, someone who could be tapped by the Mafia for a favor if the need arose. Becchina's neighbor in Castelvetrano, Ciccio Messina Denaro, was made a member of the "Super Cosa," a council of the three most powerful Mafia families, soon after Frel's arrival. The Denaro family owned several sand quarries. One of Becchina's businesses in Castelvetrano was a cement company. His business partner in that venture would later be convicted of Mafia-related crimes. Becchina denies any ties to organized crime.

  68 He sent a memo: Houghton's March 5, 1986, memo to Walsh, titled "Kouros: Public Guidance: Questions of Provenance." Houghton also noted that Becchina was "believed to work extensively with Italian sources" and that von Bothmer was convinced that the kouros had been "excavated recently, at Moz
ia, an island off Sicily's western coast."

  [>] "The kouros documents": Houghton's notes from March 5, 1986.

  In March 1986: Interviews with Hoving; Hoving, False Impressions, 279–80.

  [>] "Frel told me": Houghton's notes of the March 17, 1986, meeting with Gribbon, Walsh, and True. According to Houghton's notes, Walsh and True both thought it better not to investigate the suspect kouros documents: "JW said he believed the kouros was a recent discovery. It may have been found in S. Italy, delivered from Italians through Becchina to us. He did not want to pursue the matter of the letters—it was better not to know whether the signatures were authentic. MT made strong recommendation that the Museum should not know that the letters were forged. We should not confirm it. I disagreed."

  [>] a carefully orchestrated plan: Houghton's notes, his resignation letter, and interviews with former Getty officials. Among those Walsh consulted after reading Houghton's resignation letter was Harry Stang, an attorney at Musick, Peeler, the Getty's law firm. Years later, Stang would represent True after she was indicted by the Italians.

  5: AN AWKWARD DEBUT

  [>] Marion True had come: Biographical details about True are from her résumé her high school yearbook; and interviews with friends, a high school classmate, town officials, and former professors and colleagues, including Stanley Moss and John Herrmann. Details about her marriage to the cardiologist come from public records and an interview with her stepdaughter Fiona McCaughan. The account of True's early years at the Getty is based on interviews with former Getty staff and True's annual performance evaluations, in which she described her work. True provided details about her career in Marion True, written statement submitted to Paolo Ferri, Rome, October 17, 2006 (hereafter "True's October 17, 2006, statement to Ferri").

  [>] a growing taste for extravagance: Interview with McCaughan.

  cleaned $50,000 out: According to McCaughan, citing conversations with her father, who is now dead. In a written reply to the authors, True denied the story: "I did not leave with $50,000 nor did I claim I had the right to $50,000. We never had $50,000, but $35,000 from the sale of our previous residence. I took enough money to buy a car ($5000 for a Honda CVCC) and $750 to pay the deposit on a studio apartment in Cambridge. The divorce, for which I filed, was a no-fault divorce and I asked for nothing—no alimony, no property or anything else."