Fragments of the drinking cup signed by the potter Euphronios, which the Getty returned
to Italy in 1999.
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The
motives which induced me to carry out this operation in Greece proceeded entirely
from the wish to secure for Great Britain, and hence for Europe as a whole, the
best possible knowledge, and the means of improving it, through the most outstanding
works.
Lord
Elgin, British diplomat (1766-1841)
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Breaking
with its freewheeling past, the well-endowed California museum is abiding to a new
credo: no more dubious acquisitions, and a commitment to protecting the world’s archaeological
heritage
Marion True, the antiquities
curator of the prestigious J. Paul Getty Museum, was sitting in the audience of a
conference in Viterbo (Italy) when an Italian local heritage official fired the claim:
one of the museum’s prize pieces, a fifth-century BC drinking cup, had been looted
from Cerveteri, in the ancient area of Latium. Decorated with scenes of the Trojan
War, the cup, known as a kylix, bore the signatures of the potter Euphronios and
the painter Onesimos.
That was in 1997. Two years later, on February 5, 1999, True chaperoned three antiquities,
including the kylix, back to Italy. All three had been stolen and found their way
into the Getty’s 50,000-strong antiquities collection in Malibu, California. One
was purchased in 1982 from a European dealer who told the Getty it had long been
in England. In fact, it had been published in 1958 as part of a private collection
in Italy. The last, a youth head, came from the New York collectors Lawrence and
Barbara Fleischman, and had been taken from an excavation storeroom in Venosa.
Since taking her post at the Getty in 1986, True has had the unenviable job of dealing
with many controversial purchases made by her predecessors, not to mention the museum’s
reputation of turning a blind eye on the problematic origins of high-priced antiquities.
In 1988, American dealer Peg Goldberg confidently offered the Getty sixth-century
Byzantine mosaics stolen from the Panagía Kanakariá church in Cyprus
for $20 million. True declined, however, and reported the matter to the head of Cyprus’
department of antiquities. The mosaics were eventually returned. Still, as recently
as 1994, Boston University’s Murray McClellan chastized the museum for its “flagrant
disregard” of the American Association of Museums’ code of ethics.
One of the most embarrassing legacies of the Getty’s freewheeling past is the statue
of a kouros, a naked youth, supposedly from the sixth century BC. It was bought from
a Swiss dealer in 1983 for a reported $7 to $9 million. A letter accompanying it,
supposedly written by German scholar Ernst Langlotz in 1952, placed the statue in
a Swiss collection. This letter is a forgery; it bears a postal code that came into
use only in the 1970s. In 1990, an art historian compared the Getty’s kouros to a
torso allegedly made in Rome in 1985 by an Italian forger. The Getty acquired the
torso, made its own comparison, and could not decide if the kouros was genuine or
not. To this day, the enigma continues.
Staying
clear of costly court cases
With
these thorns in its side, the Getty announced in 1995 that it was turning a new leaf,
“with an interest in channeling our resources in new directions,” wrote True in a
press release. “We will be directing energies toward sponsoring international conservation,
education, and research projects that will lead to exhibitions and publications,
as well as exchanges and long-term loans of important works of antiquity from museums
here and abroad.” The Getty also announced a major shift in its acquisitions policy,
which True described in The Art Newspaper: “Now we would only consider buying from
an established collection that is known to the world, so that we do not have the
issue of undocumented provenance.”
Was the Getty reacting to a change in tide? Over the years, organizations such as
the Archaeological Institute of America have been unrelenting in their criticism
of the most egregious museums, collectors and dealers. Public opinion surveys reveal
strong support for protecting cultural heritage worldwide, while active source countries
– including Turkey, Italy, Greece and China – have started pursuing high-profile
cases in the U.S. As a result, museums are thinking twice about acquisitions that
may come with costly liabilities.
But according to some observers, the Getty’s new policy was seriously flawed. As
Ricardo Elia commented in Archaeology, “The term ‘well-documented provenance’ refers
to an object’s ownership history [more exactly, the history of possession] and should
not be confused with archaeological ‘provenance,’ the findspot of an object. The
Getty’s new policy, in fact, does not require proof that an object has been removed
from its country of origin through legal means; it simply requires that an established
record of possession be documented before November 1995. While the policy should
prevent the acquisition of antiquities looted or smuggled after this date, it allows
the museum to acquire pieces that were illegally removed before it.”
The
lure of priceless collections
True’s
most controversial moves involve the Fleischman collection, some 300 Bronze Age,
Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities, valued at $80 million in 1996. It was exhibited
at the Getty and at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1994 and 1995. Was the November
1995 date chosen by the museum with an eye toward the Fleischman collection acquisition?
Why not 1970, the date of the UNESCO Convention, or 1983,
the date of the Convention’s implementing legislation in the United States? True
says that no agreement or understanding existed concerning the eventual donation
of the collection to the Getty. “This acquisition,” she told The Art Newspaper in
1996, “is in line with exactly what we said we would do.” According to her, the Getty
even turned down some objects the Fleischmans bought after the 1994-1995 exhibition.
Even if there was no prior agreement, this acquisition shows the limitations of the
Getty’s new policy. Was the Fleischman collection “established” and do the objects
from it have a “well-documented provenance?” The youth’s head that True escorted
back certainly did: the storeroom in Venosa from which it was stolen. But that may
only be the tip of the iceberg. In a revealing analysis, researchers from the Cambridge
University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology found that 92 percent of the catalogue
entries had no findspot, and 70 percent of the objects had become publicly known
in the exhibition.
Waiting
for the trickle-down effect
Despite
these reservations, the Getty can no longer be labelled the voracious acquisitor
it was in the past. Moreover, its considerable resources are to be directed in constructive
ways, including site conservation. Even if it does accept collections like the Fleischmans’,
there is at least a 1995 cut-off date. Also, True has a track record of co-operating
in repatriation questions.
Has the Getty’s change in attitude caught on in other American museums? The Metropolitan
Museum in New York has yet to return a hoard of third-century BC silver vessels despite
convincing evidence they were looted from Morgantina in Sicily. Boston’s Museum of
Fine Arts has rejected recent claims made in 1998 by Mali for terracotta sculptures
and Guatemala for Mayan vases. Most disappointing was Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler
Museum’s acquisition in the mid-1990s of Greek vase fragments and coins with dubious
backgrounds, despite a 1971 policy that Harvard would no longer accept such items
“by purchase, bequest, or gift.”
But the picture is not everywhere bleak. In late 1998, for example, the Denver Art
Museum voluntarily returned a Maya wooden lintel from the site of El Zotz in Guatemala.
Dated to
ca. AD 550-650, it was stolen between 1966 and 1968 and purchased by the museum in
1973. “When we gathered all of the information surrounding the lintel’s acquisition,”
said the museum’s director Lewis Sharp, “returning it was simply the right thing
to do.” |
