[CPProt.net] Trial in Rome promises to expose looters' veiled world

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Trial in Rome promises to expose looters' veiled world 
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Steven Litt
Plain Dealer Art Critic 

Art museums present themselves to the world as tranquil showplaces of the
most beautiful objects made by mankind. 

A trial beginning Wednesday in Rome threatens to paint a different picture. 

Italian authorities say they will prove that a ring of smugglers looted
ancient treasures from archaeological sites, laundered them with fake
ownership histories and sold them to some of the world's finest museums -
possibly including the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Toledo Museum of Art.


In 1995, Italian police raided warehouses in Switzerland containing
photographs, letters and invoices. Authorities say the evidence exposes
direct links between the tombaroli - tomb robbers - and the genteel world of
art dealers, collectors, auction houses and museums. 

Evidence from the raid is at the core of Italy's upcoming case against
Marion True, a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles;
and Robert Hecht, an art dealer based in Paris and New York. 

"It's going to blow open the antiquities market and the problems of museum
collections," said Ricardo Elia, an associate professor of archaeology at
Boston University, of the trial. 

"It will show how pervasive the problem is." 

The Ohio museums are peripheral to the trial and don't face charges.
Nevertheless, court documents in the case mention objects in the Ohio
collections, which shows that the ripples reach far from Rome. 

The trial promises to open a rare window on a global antiquities market
rooted in organized crime. The trial also highlights the bitter debate
dividing archaeologists and source countries from museums and collectors. 

Archaeologists blame private collectors and museums for buying antiquities
without verifiably authentic ownership histories, thereby encouraging
looters to feed the market. Museums, for their part, say they never buy hot
goods knowingly and don't think the answer is to shut down the trade in
antiquities. 

"There is some obligation on the part of countries in which these sites
exist to police these sites," said Michael Horvitz, chairman of the
Cleveland Museum of Art. "There is a social value to people collecting
antiquities and making them available for study and learning around the
world." 

Horvitz said museums are improving the standards used to determine what they
can buy. 

"We're moving in the right direction," he said. 

But one message of the trial is that Italy wants museums and private
collectors to be even more cautious than they have been. 

"I hope that the U.S. museums and museums in other parts of the world will
be very careful in acquiring objects," Paolo Ferri, the chief Italian
prosecutor in the trial, said Thursday, speaking from his office in Rome. 

He said he wants museum curators to know they risk criminal charges in Italy
if they knowingly buy looted antiquities. 

"There's a subtle difference between turning a blind eye - which means they
don't want to know - and doing so with intent," he said. 

On trial 

in Rome 

Criminal intent is what Ferri said he can prove in the case against True. He
said he has a 1996 letter from True in which the curator wrote to Italian
dealers seeking types of ancient objects that only could have come from
Puglia, a heavily looted region in the heel of the Italian boot. 

"The Italian territory was considered a warehouse where you could buy
everything you want to buy," Ferri said. 

True is widely known for having significantly tightened the procedures used
by the Getty in buying antiquities since 1995. 

But Ferri said, "I have to prove she had two faces." 

True, 56, faces charges of having handled or received 35 stolen objects and
of having conspired with Hecht and Giacomo Medici of Italy, another art
dealer. 

The Getty has said that it believes True, who could not be reached for
comment, will be exonerated. Francesca Coppi, one of True's lawyers in Rome,
said Friday, "We will make a great battle in court to demonstrate her
absolute innocence." 

Coppi also said that True "had only one face as curator of the museum.
Everything she did was in the light of the sun." 

Hecht, 86, who will go on trial with True, has denied wrongdoing. 

Medici, 67, was convicted in Rome in December on charges of having received
and exported antiquities. He is free while appealing a 10-year sentence,
according to news reports. 

Bloomberg News reported that Hecht and Medici supplied 96 objects to 10
museums around the world, including the Cleveland Museum of Art and the
Toledo Museum of Art. 

Ferri confirmed that court documents mention the Cleveland and Toledo
museums. But he could not immediately provide details beyond those already
reported. He said the indictments of True and Hecht were not public records
in Italy, and he could not share them. 

In Cleveland's case, the object mentioned in court documents is an ancient
Greek lekythos, a slender, long-necked oil jar painted with figures in
black. In Toledo's case, it's an Etruscan kalpis, a large vessel painted
with scenes of dolphins. 

Ferri said he has no plans to bring charges against curators at the museums
in Cleveland and Toledo, and he knows of no plans by the Italian government
to ask the museums to return the objects. 

Charles Venable, the Cleveland Museum of Art's deputy director for
collections and programs, and Michael Bennett, the museum's curator of
ancient art, could not be reached for comment. 

Both Ohio museums, meanwhile, say the objects mentioned in news accounts of
the indictments against True and Hecht are not in their collections. Neither
museum has heard directly from Italy regarding the trial. 

But while there's no hard proof that the museums own objects connected to
the trial in Rome, such links still may exist. 


Objects purchased 

by Ohio museums 

The Cleveland museum bought eight works from Hecht between 1951 and 1990.
The works include a lekythos purchased in 1985, the period under
investigation in the case against True and Hecht. 

The Toledo museum owns a large Etruscan kalpis similar to the one mentioned
in the indictments against True and Hecht. Holly Taylor, the museum's
marketing manager, said the museum bought the work in 1982 from a dealer who
was not Hecht and whom she declined to name. 

In 2001, Taylor said, the museum received an inquiry from the U.S.
Department of Justice about the vase, at the behest of Italy. The museum
responded but hasn't heard anything since, Taylor said. 

The Ohio museums said they have no interest in keeping any objects if it can
be proven they were stolen. 

"Nobody wants to harbor stolen property," Horvitz said. "We're going to do
the right thing in light of the facts as they appear." 

Don Bacigalupi, director of the Toledo museum, said in a written statement:
"We are not interested in holding in our collection works of art that have
legitimate claim elsewhere." 

A long history 

of plundering 

The trial in Rome exposes a sliver of the illicit global trade in
antiquities that stretches from China to Guatemala - a practice with a long
history. 

Centuries ago, European armies and colonial powers plundered art from Italy,
Greece and the Middle East without a second thought. The Scottish Earl of
Elgin hauled off marble sculptures from the Parthenon in 1801. Napoleon
filled the Louvre with masterpieces stolen from Italy, including the Mona
Lisa. 

Since the early 20th century, however, many countries rich in ancient
treasure have regulated archaeological digs and tried to retain their
patrimony. International agreements on the issue include the 1970 UNESCO
Convention on Cultural Property, aimed at halting illicit trade in art and
antiquities. The United States signed a bilateral agreement with Italy in
2001 to tighten controls on the antiquities market - an agreement now up for
renewal. 

Despite the agreements, American museums still buy antiquities without
complete provenances, or ownership histories. 

Last year, the Cleveland museum bought a large bronze statue of Apollo
reportedly discovered by a retired German lawyer on his family's estate in
the 1990s. The museum has no hard evidence to prove the lawyer's assertion
that the sculpture had been in his family's collection since the 1930s. 

"They shouldn't have bought it," Ferri said. "They have to avoid
acquisitions without clear documentation." 

Malcolm Bell III, nationally respected professor of art history at the
University of Virginia, who is watching the Rome trial closely, knows
firsthand what it's like to face looting. 

Every summer, he supervises an excavation in Sicily where he and his
colleagues take turns at night guarding against looters. 

"Everyone should become more aware of the serious nature of the problem," he
said. "It deprives works of art of their material context, of what we can
learn about their purpose and function. It privileges aesthetic values over
everything else." 

He said museums shouldn't buy any antiquity that hasn't been published in a
book, magazine or scholarly journal before the UNESCO convention. 

"The evidence should not be a dealer's story, but a published account of the
work that would allow a museum to believe it's not actively participating in
the market today," he said. 

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: 

slitt at plaind.com, 216-999-4136