[CPProt.net] Italy and U.S. museum near art claim deal

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Italy and U.S. museum near art claim deal 
By Elisabetta Povoledo International Herald Tribune 
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2005

 
For all the saber-rattling before their grueling six-hour meeting on
Tuesday, Italy's Culture Ministry and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York have mapped out a potential solution to Italy's claims on antiquities
in the museum's collection, officials said Wednesday.
 
In essence, Italy would officially own the works, which it asserts were
looted within its borders, but the Met would get to keep them or receive
objects of equal value on a long-term loan basis.
 
Officials said the compromise, still in its nascent stage and requiring
approval from the Met's board of trustees and the Italian government, could
resolve Italy's longstanding claims on some of the Met's most prized
antiquities, which include a 15-piece Hellenistic silver set and a
sixth-century B.C. urn decorated by the Greek painter Euphronios.
 
While remarking that the dispute been a "thorn in everyone's side," Philippe
de Montebello, the Met's director, made clear in an interview that the
museum did not intend to come out the loser.
 
"If there were to be a return or a transfer of title to the Italian state
where major objects are concerned, Italy will send the Met loans - for a
continually renewable period of time - of objects of equal importance and
beauty," he said. The operating principle, he added, is that "at no point
will the absence of major objects not be covered by like objects from
Italian collections."
 
In the meeting, Italy pressed claims on 22 objects in the Met's collection
that it contends were illegally excavated and exported. But rather than
negotiating for an admission of wrongdoing, said Giuseppe Proietti, a top
member of the Italian delegation, Italy made clear that it was seeking a
pragmatic outcome.
 
"We will provide proof that the pieces came from Italy, Proietti said. "And
new elements may have emerged that perhaps were not known when the museum
bought some pieces, and that may convince a prestigious institution like the
Met to act on this new information."
 
But de Montebello underscored that Italy would have to provide
"incontrovertible evidence" to the museum that the works they claim were
illegally excavated in Italy.
 
"If we are convinced by the evidence, we will take appropriate action," he
said.
 
Restitution, in any case, would not be an admission on the museum's part
that it had knowledge of a potentially illicit provenance when it bought the
pieces. 
 
"Any change of title - or the return - is without prejudice," he said.
 
The dispute between Italy and the Met over the Euphronios krater, a bowl for
mixing water and wine, dates from 1972, when the museum bought the piece for
$1 million from Robert Hecht, a American dealer. Ten years later, Hecht sold
the Met 15 objects that are widely described as some of the finest examples
known of Hellenistic silver from the Magna Graecia region of ancient Greek
colonies in southern Italy.
 
In both cases, Italy contended that the pieces had been illegally dug up and
sold - from a site near Rome, in the case of the krater, and from one in
central Sicily in the case of the silver. (Magna Graecia technically did not
encompass Greek Sicily.)
 
But Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, the superintendent of Pompeii and an antiquities
expert who studied the silver and whose findings were published by the Met,
said Wednesday that he believed that his study had conclusively shown that
the pieces were from Sicily.
 
"Until you find other scholars that say the contrary, these silver pieces
are certainly from that area of Sicily," he said.
 
Up to now, the Met has pronounced any evidence that those items were looted
to be inconclusive. But on Wednesday, de Montebello said he was open to
hearing the Italians out.
 
"We think the evidence is inconclusive," he said. "On the other hand, if the
Italians provided information that would suggest the high probability that
they were illegally excavated, we could arrive at an arrangement - also
including reciprocal loans - that puts the whole thing behind us."
 
Hecht, who sold the silver to the Met, is currently on trial in Rome on
criminal charges of conspiring with Marion True, the former antiquities
curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, to import stolen
antiquities for the Getty. The high-profile case has refocused the spotlight
on the illicit international trade in antiquities and spurred the Met to
take a look at other pieces in its collection.
 
Evidence used to convict Giacomo Medici, an antiquities dealer who was a
co-defendant in the original joint indictment, last December of trafficking
in looted art led the Italians to home in on at least six other objects in
the Met's antiquities collection. 
 
But de Montebello said that True's trial did not figure into his decision to
seek discussions with Italy's culture ministry. With that goal accomplished,
the Met is now waiting for Italy to send the museum specific documentation
on the contested items.
 
"Until now, we have received nothing, no information has been communicated
to us," said de Montebello, who said that as far as he knew, only the United
States Justice Department had been officially informed of Italy's claims to
the Met pieces. "We have nothing to hide. We're interested in the truth and
maintaining high ethical standards."
 
Italian investigators, however, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear
of jeopardizing the negotiations, said the Met had received an international
subpoena from the Italians regarding several objects and that it had
responded to it.
 
Still, pressing for legal action seems to be the last thing on Italy's
agenda. "We don't want to arrive at the point we got to with the Getty, and
there's the will on both sides here to close this chapter," said Proietti,
who added that the ministry had sought to reach a similar accord with the
Los Angeles institution three years ago.
 
"Had the Getty listened to us then, we probably would not have arrived at
the point we are now in Rome," he said.
 
De Montebello spoke on Wednesday of the "sea change" that had come about at
museums in recent years, with the introduction of new ethical guidelines and
stricter policies on acquisitions.
 
"Before the purchase of any antiquity, rigorous due diligence is conducted,
and there is no question that far fewer pieces in the future will meet our
criteria," he said.
 
Both Proietti and de Montebello predicted that an agreement between Italy
and the Met would not be long in coming, with the approval of the Met's
board and the Italian government. 
 
And Montebello said the rotating loan agreement would give Italy valued
exposure in the United States.
 
"There will be new public attention with every new loan, and heightened
focus on Italy's cultural patrimony," he said, describing the Met as "a
Fifth Avenue window for five million visitors."
 
http://www.iht.com/