[CPProt.net] Italians Say Photos Show 6 Met Items Were Looted

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THE WORLD
Italians Say Photos Show 6 Met Items Were Looted
By Ralph Frammolino and Jason Felch
Times Staff Writers

October 29, 2005

ROME - Extending their reach beyond the J. Paul Getty Museum, Italian
authorities have used confiscated photographs to trace six pieces of
allegedly looted ancient Greek pottery to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York.

According to Italian court records, prosecutors also have photographs
showing eight other allegedly looted objects that are part of the private
collection of Shelby White, a Met board member, and her late husband,
financier Leon Levy.

The couple donated $20 million to the Met to build a Roman and Greek court
in their name. Museum experts have speculated that the space is most likely
being built to house the Levy-White collection.

If the Met eventually acquires the collection, one of the most significant
still in private hands, the Italian photographs could become a complicating
factor, the experts said.

Both the Met and White declined to comment this week.

Italian authorities allege that the objects identified at the Met and in the
Levy-White collection were among thousands illegally excavated from tombs
and ruins and smuggled out of the country long after a 1939 Italian law
prohibited the unauthorized export of antiquities.

The objects represent only a small fraction of both collections, but are
cited in Italian court records as proof that Giacomo Medici, an Italian
dealer based in Switzerland, sold objects that ended up in the collections.
The photographs - neatly cataloged Polaroids - were confiscated during a
1995 raid on his Geneva warehouse.

As such, the Italian evidence widens the controversy regarding allegedly
looted antiquities far beyond the Getty, which so far has been the only
institution publicly singled out by Italian prosecutors.

Medici was convicted last year of trafficking in looted antiquities and is
appealing a 10-year prison sentence. His co-defendants, Robert E. Hecht Jr.,
an American antiquities dealer, and Marion True, the Getty's former
antiquities curator, face trial next month.

The Italians charged True with conspiracy to traffic in stolen artifacts
after identifying 42 antiquities at the Getty that they believe were looted.
They are demanding that the antiquities be returned.

Italian officials said in Rome in recent interviews that they will continue
to gather evidence against the Met and other museums but are undecided
whether to press charges or use the information as leverage in negotiations
for the return of some items.

The Times reported Friday that the Italians are demanding that the Met
return one of its prized antiquities, the 2,500-year-old Euphronios krater,
after gathering new information about the object's origin.

Hecht, the American dealer and close associate of Medici, sold the
terracotta bowl to the Met in 1972. At the time, he told museum officials
that he had acquired it from a Lebanese man whose family purchased it before
Italian law prohibited its removal.

The Italians' new information includes a personal memoir seized from Hecht's
Paris apartment. In it, Hecht writes that Medici showed him a Polaroid
photograph of the object and sold the bowl to him for about $380,000.

Reached Thursday, Hecht said the story was a fiction designed to market the
memoir. Medici also denied the account.

The Polaroids used to identify the allegedly looted objects at the Met and
in the Levy-White collection show antiquities encrusted with dirt and
unrestored - proof, the Italians say, that they had been excavated recently,
therefore illegally.

David Gill, an archeologist at the University of Wales, said the photos were
close to "smoking gun" documentary evidence of looting.

In acquiring antiquities, museums can demand proof that objects were legally
excavated and exported. Or they can take a chance on items without
documented ownership history, or provenance. Although it is difficult to
prove that such items have been looted, the consensus among archeologists
and legal experts is that most were probably removed without the source
country's permission.

"Anything in that condition," Gill said of the unrestored objects in the
Polaroids, "is probably fresh out of the ground."

Records show that the six items tracked to the Met collection include a
Greek jug, or amphora, covered with dirt in one of the Polaroids. Another
object, an ancient mixing bowl, was shown in pieces, on sheets of bubble
wrap.

"It can be stated with absolute certainly that all eight pieces examined
were smuggled by Medici, who sold them - directly or through a third party -
to the Levy-White collection," the court records say.

Gill said the Italian investigation "endorses" a study that he and a
colleague did of the Levy-White collection when portions of it were
exhibited by the Met in 1990. He said the study found that 84% of the
collection lacked ownership documentation, indicating that it was probably
looted.

In 1996, the Getty acquired more than 300 antiquities from Lawrence and
Barbara Fleischman, New York art patrons whose collection was considered one
of the finest private holdings in the world.

Most of the objects had no documented ownership history. Many had been
acquired from Medici, Hecht and a British dealer, Robin Symes. Based on the
Polaroid photographs seized from Medici's warehouse, the Italians have
identified 11 objects from the Fleischman collection as having been looted
and are seeking their return.

Thomas Hoving, the Met's director from 1967 to 1977 who has become an
outspoken critic of acquisition practices at both the Getty and the Met,
said Friday that the new Italian evidence has put the New York museum on
notice that the eight identified items in the Levy-White collection could be
tainted.

If the Met acquires the collection with the eight objects, Hoving said, it
could anger Italian prosecutors as they continue their criminal
investigation. But if the Met questions the objects' origins, he said, it
risks offending White, one of its most important benefactors.

"They're in a bind," said Hoving. "Now they've got to hunker down and hope
for the best."