[CPProt.net] Italy Seeks Meeting With Met on Looting

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

November 12, 2005
Italy Seeks Meeting With Met on Looting 
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO and HUGH EAKIN

Several Italian officials, including members of Italy's cultural heritage
police, were in Manhattan yesterday as part of a broad investigation into
looted antiquities that they say have made their way into American museums
and collections. The investigation includes 22 objects at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art as well as dozens of objects at other museums, Italian
officials said. 

In Rome, the Italian culture minister said yesterday that the Italian
government had made overtures to the Met's director, Philippe de Montebello,
about a joint meeting to discuss ancient artworks that Italy claims were
illegally excavated and exported before entering the museum's collection of
Greek and Roman art. 

"I have invited Philippe de Montebello to meet with Culture Ministry
experts, and I do not exclude meeting him personally if the encounter with
the experts goes well," the minister, Rocco Buttiglione, announced at a news
conference. 

A spokesman for the Met, Harold Holzer, said that the museum was talking
with Italian officials about arranging such a meeting in Rome but that no
date had been set. 

"Discussions are under way now and will resume on Monday," he said, adding
that he expected the meeting would take place "in the very near future." 

Among the objects that Italian officials suggest were looted are a bowl for
mixing wine and water dating from the sixth century B.C. and signed by the
painter Euphronios, acquired by the Met in 1972, and a third-century B.C.
silver service acquired in two batches in 1981 and 1982. In the last five
years, Italy has also raised questions about other objects at the museum,
including several Apulian and Attic vases that are said to have come from
Italy. One is a red-figure Apulian vase dating from the fourth century B.C.
and attributed to the Darius Painter, Italian officials said.

Italy has formally requested that the museum provide information about these
works and how they were acquired, and the Met has responded to that request,
Italian officials said, without offering further details. Mr. Holzer
described the museum's discussions with Italy as "an exchange of information
and questions." He declined to comment on the specific objects involved,
although the Met has previously acknowledged discussions with Italy about
the 15-piece silver set.

Mr. Buttiglione said the Culture Ministry hoped that a meeting with Mr. de
Montebello could end a longstanding dispute with the museum over the silver
and the Euphronios vase. Italian officials said they had both archaeological
and forensic evidence showing that the silver pieces were looted from
Morgantina, a site in central Sicily, but the Met has responded that the
evidence is insufficient, several Italian officials said. 

In a telephone interview, Mr. Buttiglione described these works as some of
Italy's "most important art treasures." They are "among those we miss most,"
he said, "though there are too many lost." 

Reached yesterday in New York, a member of the Italian delegation declined
to comment on the continuing investigation. During their visit to the city,
they have taken possession from Christie's auction house of two 18th-century
paintings by the Milanese artist Andrea Appiani and an undated head of the
Roman emperor Trajan. 

All three works had been stolen from Italy and were impounded at the auction
house in New York in 2003 and 2004. A spokeswoman for Christie's did not
return a phone call requesting comment yesterday.

Earlier this week, the Italian delegation traveled to Los Angeles to reclaim
three antiquities from the J. Paul Getty Museum. The museum, whose former
antiquities curator, Marion True, was indicted in Italy two years ago on
charges of conspiring to acquire stolen antiquities, agreed to return three
objects in a separate agreement in September. The works include a
fifth-century B.C. bronze Etruscan candelabrum, a sixth-century B.C. stone
inscription and a rare red-figure krater, or vase.

Italian officials said the return of that vase, which was acquired by the
Getty in 1981 and had been the subject of previous legal action in a
California court, was particularly important. Attributed to the painter
Asteas, the vase was the object of a forfeiture complaint filed in April
2004 by the United States attorney for the Central District of California
against the Getty Museum. The complaint asserted that the krater had been
illegally excavated in Italy and therefore belonged to Italy under a 1939
law. 

According to court papers, the krater was dug up in 1974 in a small town
north of Naples and sold to a dealer in exchange for a small sum of money
and a pig. It was later sold to the Getty by the Italian dealer Giovanni
Becchina for $275,000. According to a statement released this week by the
federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the Asteas vase is a
"crucial piece of evidence" in the trial of Ms. True and Robert E. Hecht
Jr., an American dealer who has also been indicted in the Rome case, and
their trial resumes next week. 

But the Italian prosecutor in the case, Paolo Ferri, said yesterday that the
pieces returned this week were not part of the specific case against Ms.
True or Mr. Hecht.

Elisabetta Provoledo reported for this article from Rome and Hugh Eakin from
New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/