[CPProt.net] Malcolm Bell: The Getty's dubious purchases

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Malcolm Bell: The Getty's dubious purchases
By Malcolm Bell
Published 2:15 am PST Tuesday, November 29, 2005

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- Paolo Ferri, the Italian prosecutor who is
investigating the purchases of antiquities by major American museums, has
hit hardest at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, which in recent decades
rapidly built up an impressive collection of Greek and Roman art. The
Getty's troubles -- compounded recently by legal action from Greece for the
recovery of four works -- offer a useful lesson for museums and collectors.
But it is unfortunate that a chief target of the prosecution is the Getty
curator who has done the most to clean up the practices of her institution
in this murky trade, Marion True.

According to the Italian court, for two decades before 1995 the Getty bought
many previously unknown antiquities that had been looted from archaeological
sites. Such works were laundered by the antiquities market, and consequently
almost nothing is known (at least by the public) about where they came from
or what purposes they served.

Some of these are among the most important discoveries of the period, and
the loss of information about their origins is painful.

The Getty's controversial "Morgantina Aphrodite" is an extremely rare
example of the sort of cult statue that once stood within a Greek temple.
While, as some have asserted, this remarkable work may come from Morgantina
(a site in Sicily where I serve as co-director of excavations), no proof of
its origin is known, and its subject is just as uncertain. The market
destroyed the evidence.

For this and countless works, many questions remain unanswered: Where were
they found? What artists and patrons conceived them? When were they used?
Most such works of art were clumsily excavated at night (the Aphrodite was
badly damaged in the process, as must have been the spot from which it was
taken), then absorbed into the art market stripped of their earlier history,
including any record of ownership in antiquity -- just the sort of
information about provenance that museums are expected to go to lengths to
preserve.

The recent revelations about the Getty's dubious purchases are old news to
archaeologists who worked at classical sites in the Mediterranean in the
1980s and early 1990s; we regarded the museum as a powerful stimulus to the
illegal market. For the last decade, however, the Getty has prohibited the
purchase or acceptance as a gift of any work whose existence is not
documented before 1995.

Undocumented antiquities are very likely to have been pillaged. By adopting
a concrete date before which the object had to be known, the Getty has
distanced itself from the illicit market, and the distance will increase
with time.

The pre-1995 publication rule is vital because dealers have often invented
fake pedigrees for the works they sell. The Getty's present acquisitions
policy is owed to True, its former curator of Greek and Roman antiquities.
The Getty policy is arguably the strongest of any major American museum, and
as far as we know it has not been violated.

Other museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine
Arts in Boston and several major university collections (Princeton and
Harvard among them) instead follow the policy adopted by the Association of
Art Museum Directors, which allows the purchase of undocumented antiquities
if the museum believes acquisition is justified. The problem here is that
objects newly on the market with no known history are almost certain to have
been recently pillaged. If dealers revealed the origins of such works they
could not possibly be sold. 

Photographs seized in a 1995 police raid on the warehouse of one dealer,
Giacomo Medici (who has already been convicted through the efforts of Ferri)
show Italian soil still clinging to vases now in American collections,
including the Metropolitan in New York.

Most archaeologists, of course, would prefer an acquisitions policy that is
even stronger than the Getty's -- one that would require proof that the
object was documented much earlier than 1995. Some advocate the symbolic
date of 1970, when the UNESCO convention on illicit trade in cultural
property was approved. A more rigorous choice would be the date of the
relevant legislation protecting antiquities in the country of origin (in the
case of Italy, June 1, 1939). Either way, choosing a date is essential.

The pillaging of the human past is a problem the world over, hardly limited
to the Mediterranean. To reduce it, all countries that have antiquities at
risk should police their historical sites effectively and create programs
that teach citizens the value and community importance of local remains. The
international trade can also be discouraged by import bans. The UNESCO
convention allows the United States to sign bilateral agreements with
countries where pillaging is rampant, banning entire categories of objects
at risk.

Nine such agreements are now in force with countries in Central and South
America, Africa, the Mediterranean and Asia. (The agreement with Italy is up
for renewal.) In the end, however, the law can do only so much, and as
legitimate custodians of human achievement, the museums should adopt higher
standards in building collections, cutting their ties with the illegal
trade.

Ferri's outrage at the looting of Italy's heritage is justified.

By laying bare the archives and warehouses of major dealers, he has revealed
corruption at the core of the market. But in prosecuting True, he has used
decades-old evidence against a curator who brought needed reform to the
Getty Museum, and I can only hope the Italian courts recognize the good she
has done.

If there is one major lesson to be learned from Ferri's investigations, it
is that collectors and museums, in America and around the world, must take
into account not just the aesthetic value of the objects they acquire but
also the ethical and legal consequences of their acquisition policies.


About the writer:
Malcolm Bell III, a professor of art history at the University of Virginia,
is the vice president for professional responsibilities at the
Archaeological Institute of America. His comments appeared in the New York
Times. 

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