[CPProt.net] Getty museum tightlipped on looting claim

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Getty museum tightlipped on looting claim
Wednesday, September 28, 2005 at 07:54 JST
LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles' famed Getty Museum was tightlipped Tuesday over a
report that half the masterpieces in its antiquities collection had been
bought from dealers accused of selling looted artifacts.

The museum, established by the J Paul Getty Trust left by the U.S. oil
billionaire, however admits that 82 pieces in its antiquities collection of
several thousand items were acquired from dubious dealers.

The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that the museum's lawyers had
determined that the 82 suspect items included 54 of the 104 ancient artworks
that the Getty has identified as masterpieces.

The paper said the items had been purchased from dealers now under
investigation for allegedly selling artifacts looted from ruins in Italy.

But the Getty Museum insisted it had never knowingly bought illegally
uncovered artifacts and defended its curator of antiquities, Marion True,
who has been charged in Italy with conspiring to traffic in looted
antiquities.

"The Getty remains convinced that it never knowingly acquired an object that
had been illegally excavated or exported from Italy or any other country,"
the museum said in a statement.

The museum slammed the Los Angeles Times for quoting leaked documents of
"questionable credibility" in its report, but referred to an "internal
analysis that identified 82 of the objects" in the museum's antiquities
collection as being obtained from dealers now under investigation.

"The fact that those dealers may have been discredited does not, however,
mean that any object acquired from one of them was illegally excavated or
exported," the museum said in a statement.

Italy is now seeking the return of 42 objects in the Getty's collection.

But the museum declined to comment further on the allegations surrounding it
and True.

"As much as it would like to be able to do so, the Getty cannot respond to
many of the Times' assertions because they rely on privileged and
confidential information stolen from the Getty's files, and responding would
jeopardize Dr True's right to a fair trial in the current proceeding," it
said.

"Based upon the information and evidence that it has seen, the Getty
continues to believe that Dr True's trial should result in her exoneration,"
it said in a statement.

The Times said Italian authorities had identified dozens of objects in the
Getty collection as looted, including ancient urns, vases and a five-foot
marble statue of Apollo.

Citing hundreds of pages of Getty records, it said museum officials had
received information as early as 1985 that three of their principal
suppliers were selling objects that probably had been looted and that the
museum continued to buy from them anyway.

The dealers include Giacomo Medici and American Robert Hecht Jr who have
been charged along with True by Italian authorities. (Wire reports)

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