[CPProt.net] View from the Getty. If the Italians have their way, there soon will be a little less to see.

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

View from the Getty
If the Italians have their way, there soon will be a little less to see.
 
 
We've noticed that visitors to the renowned J. Paul Getty Museum spend more
time admiring the imposing buildings, designed by Richard Meier, than the
antiquities collection they contain. That could be a good thing, given that
the Italian government maintains that many of the antiquities were stolen.
How embarrassing it was to learn recently that, not only did the Getty's
CEO, Barry Munitz, seem to be living awfully well on the nonprofit's
proceeds; that the Italians wanted their artwork back; that the curator of
antiquities, Marion True, faced criminal charges of looting in Italy; but
that Ms. True also had once bought a villa in Greece with a loan from a
supplier of the questionable antiquities and was quietly resigning her
position.

Still, as it turns out, things are not nearly so grim as they seemed. In an
opinion piece this week written for the L.A. Times (which had done the
investigative work that turned up most of the Getty's embarrassments),
Malcolm Bell III, a professor of art history at the University of Virginia,
portrayed the Getty in a different light.

The Getty, he wrote, not only is no worse than many other museums, it had
led the way in adopting a code of ethics superior to those of its
competitors. The code was authored by none other than Marion True.

Prof. Bell knows whereof he writes. For many years he was a co-director of
excavations at Morgantina, Italy, where his research work often was
subverted by looters. A good many purloined pieces of antiquity got sold for
many millions of dollars, and ended up proudly on display at some of the
best museums.

Prof. Bell went on to praise the Getty's curator for having worked
successfully to build the character of her institution, and called upon the
great museums of New York, Boston, Cleveland and elsewhere to follow her
lead in adopting aggressive codes of ethics. Unfortunately, according to the
Times' reporting, the Getty was busy acquiring questionable antiquities well
after the Getty had adopted these fine standards.

The timing of all these accusations is particularly awkward, since the Getty
is about to reopen its smaller campus in Malibu after several years of
restoration. That lavish little museum, originally patterned after a Roman
villa, also is noted for its Mediterranean antiquities.

There may be a few less antiquities to put on display, if the Italians have
their way. But then at Malibu, as in the hills of West L.A., the tourists
seem more interested in the buildings anyway.


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