Another review of Chasing Aphrodite – about the Italian’s hunt for looted artefacts in the Getty Museum.

Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum
Author: Ralph Frammolino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)
ISBN: 0151015015

From:
Washington Times

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Chasing Aphrodite’
CHASING APHRODITE: THE HUNT FOR LOOTED ANTIQUITIES AT THE WORLD’S RICHEST MUSEUM
By Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28 384 pages, illustrated

The 19th century was the golden age of acquisition. European and American collectors, smitten with the lure of antiquities from Greece, Italy and China, spent recklessly to assemble great collections in London, Paris and New York. No one questioned that marbles from the Parthenon would get more careful attention in London than in Athens.

Then the tide began to turn. Italians became restless at the sight of their “patrimony” being exported abroad. In 1939, Italy passed a cultural property law stating that archaeological objects found after that date were the property of the state. In Athens, Greeks demanded the return of the Elgin Marbles.
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The Trial (without result) of former Getty curator Marion True has been covered here many times before. The book “Chasing Aphrodite” aims to retell some of this story, as well as the background to it.

Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum
Author: Ralph Frammolino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)
ISBN: 0151015015

From:
New York Review of Books

What Went Wrong at the Getty
June 23, 2011
Hugh Eakin

Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum
by Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 375 pp., $28.00

1.

On August 5, 70 BC, at 1:30 in the afternoon, a remarkable criminal trial began in Rome. A young prosecutor named Marcus Tullius Cicero was accusing a senior Roman political official, Gaius Verres, of extortion and misrule during Verres’s tenure as governor of Sicily. “For three long years he so thoroughly despoiled and pillaged the province that its restoration to its previous state is out of the question,” Cicero proclaimed in his bold opening statement.
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The Agrigento Youth statue that was loaned to the Getty as part of a artefact exchange to resolve a dispute with Italy has now been returned to Italy.

From:
Getty blogs

Agrigento Youth Returns to Italy on a Pedestal—A Very High-Tech One
By Annelisa Stephan on April 15, 2011

Centuries ago, a marble sculpture known as the Agrigento Youth took a violent fall, losing his nose and parts of his arms and legs. The cause? Likely an earthquake.

The statue, loaned to us by the Museo Archeologico Regionale in Agrigento as part of our partnership with the Sicilian Ministry of Culture and Sicilian Identity, begins his journey from the Getty Villa back to Sicily at the end of this month. But this time he’ll be protected from tumbles, thanks to a high-tech mechanism concealed in his base.
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The Getty’s Aphrodite has now returned to Morgantina in Sicily following pressure from Italy.

From:
SAFE

Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Returning archeological artifacts to local communities: the example of the Morgantina Aphrodite

Aidone is a tranquil, rural town in central Sicily (Italy) that recently has become subject of the attention of international news, having checkmated – so to say – two of the most famous and powerful cultural institution in the world, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the unscrupulous collecting practice for which the obsession with “owning” an unique artifact overshadows due legal end ethical questions about provenance before the acquisition.

Aidone and its Archaeological Museum are now home of the so much disputed Morgantina Silver Trove, 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt items returned by the MET in 2010, and the Morgantina Aphrodite, the statue repatriated by the Getty in March 2011, both illegally excavated and exported from the ancient Greek site of Morgantina, the nearby archaeological centre, in the 1980’s. The Museum exhibits re-contextualize the artifacts according to the site’s history, as retraced by the various field excavations (Princeton University, University of Illinois, University of Virginia, along with the Italian Ministry of Culture) involved in researching and studying this ancient Greek colony.
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More coverage of the return of a disputed statue from the Getty’s collection to Sicily.

Los Angeles Times

Getty ships Aphrodite statue to Sicily
The iconic statue, bought in 1988, is among 40 objects of disputed origin repatriated.
March 23, 2011|By Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The J. Paul Getty Museum’s iconic statue of Aphrodite was quietly escorted back to Sicily by Italian police last week, ending a decades-long dispute over an object whose craftsmanship, importance and controversial origins have been likened to the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum.

The 7-foot tall, 1,300-pound statue of limestone and marble was painstakingly taken off display at the Getty Villa and disassembled in December. Last week, it was locked in shipping crates with an Italian diplomatic seal and loaded aboard an Alitalia flight to Rome, where it arrived on Thursday. From there it traveled with an armed police escort by ship and truck to the small hilltop town of Aidone, Sicily, where it arrived Saturday to waiting crowds.
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Following on from the end of Marion True’s trial, it seems as though this is a case where the approach of direct legal action by Italy may have caused as many problems as it solved. Huge amounts were spent on a trial involving an institution that had been largely cooperative regarding the return of disputed artefacts in the past (bear in mind that this article is from the perspective of the Getty however – I think that this cooperation might not have seemed to apparent to the other parties that wanted artefacts returned that they knew were looted, yet didn’t have conclusive proof of this.

From:
The Art Newspaper

“Neither condemned nor vindicated”
Marion True on why it is hard to accept the lack of verdict after her five-year trial
By Marion True | From issue 220, January 2011
Published online 5 Jan 11 (News)

The trial of Marion True, the former antiquities curator of the Getty Museum (which for many years has been one of the leading collectors of world-class antiquities), for conspiring to receive antiquities that had been illegally excavated and exported from Italy, began on 16 November 2005. The Art Newspaper has been covering the trial since its outset. Until March 2009, the prosecution worked through its case, and then the defence began cross-examining witnesses, but True has had no opportunity to present her case directly. Here, she tells The Art Newspaper about the trial and its outcome.

A headline in The Art Newspaper in June 2010 announced that the trial in Rome against me had “collapsed” after five years, the statutes of limitations for all crimes of which I was accused by the Italian state having expired. The court officially recognised this fact on 13 October in a hearing of 12 minutes. Thus, my five-year long trial ended without judgment—neither condemnation nor vindication, a reality hard to accept, given the distorted and slanderous allegations against me. Throughout, my lawyers advised me not to speak out, not to undermine my defence.
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International laws such as Unidrois convention that deal with cases of disputed cultural property (Through their adoption by UNESCO) are seen by many as a good thing – although clearly not by all, as many countries have yet to subscribe to these conventions. The conventions do not act retrospectively however – so there is a strong argument that they have created a division in the market – between those artefacts acquired before the convention came into force & those acquired afterwards. Many collectors fear that these conventions are devaluing their collections – but this point is counterbalanced byt the fact that is the artefact was acquired legitimately & has good provenance (which is the only real way of proving that it was acquired legitimately) then there should not be any problems.

From:
New York Times

Auctions
Wanted: Antiquities Beyond Reproach
By SOUREN MELIKIAN
Published: December 17, 2010

NEW YORK — The impact of the Unidroit convention, adopted by Unesco when endeavoring to protect the artistic heritage of mankind, starting with its archaeological treasures, is beginning to make itself as never before, although not quite in the way that its promoters expected.

By all accounts, the terrifying destruction of archaeological sites goes on, from Syria to Afghanistan to Nepal. But on the auction scene the consequence of Unidroit, to which only a few countries subscribe, is that some collectors live in fear that their favorite game, buying the relics of antiquity, may soon end. Many suspect that objects that cannot be proved to have been acquired before 1970 — the cutoff date set by the Unidroit convention — will become financially worthless or exceedingly difficult to negotiate.
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The Getty Villa’s Cult Statue of a Goddess is returning to Sicily, where it is thought to have been illegally excavated in the 1970s. This decision to return the statue follows earlier refusals when the museum previously insisted that it had acted in good faith when purchasing the sculpture. This is Sicily’s second successful artefact restitution in recent weeks, following the Morgantina Silver returned by New York’s Metropolitan Museum.

Various other artefacts (currently the sculpture of the Agrigento Youth) are being loaned to the Getty by Italy in return for the ongoing restitution programme. This is a similar arrangement to the offer that has previously been put forward by Greece to the British Museum as a proposal to enable the return of the Parthenon Sculptures.

LA Times

Getty Villa prepares to say farewell to its goddess
The museum welcomes the culture minister of Sicily, where the ancient sculpture will return, ending decades of contention over looted artworks.
By Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times
December 7, 2010

To look at her — 71/2 feet tall atop her earthquake-resistant pedestal, her face serene, her limestone robes rippling in an unfelt wind — is not just to appreciate a pinnacle of ancient Greek statuary, but to experience a semblance of how divinity must have felt to awestruck pagans.

And now the great goddess, once described as “the greatest piece of classical sculpture in … any country outside of Greece and Great Britain,” not to mention the most costly antiquity the J. Paul Getty Trust ever acquired, is about to depart.
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Italy is demanding the return of an ancient Greek helmet that it believes was looted from an archaeological site in 1993. They are following their approach taken in many successful recent cases, by following up their requests with legal action.

From:
Earthtimes

Italy pursues ‘stolen’ early Greek helmet in German court
Posted : Wed, 08 Dec 2010 10:47:53 GMT

Berlin – The Italian government is going to court in Berlin this week to claim an early Greek metal helmet, which it claims was stolen from an archaeological site in Italy in 1993, a court spokesman said Wednesday.

Greek-speaking trading cities existed on southern Italy’s coasts in the 7th to 6th century BC when the helmet, distinctive for its geometric style of decoration with zigzags and concentric circles, was made.
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The Met has been hitting the headlines fairly regularly with news of positive decisions on restitution cases. The latest artefact return involving the New York museum is the Morgantina Silver, following an agreement reached in 2006 allowing them joint custody of it with the Aidone Archaeological Museum.

From:
New York Times

A Trove of Ancient Silver Said to Be Stolen Returns to Its Home in Sicily
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
Published: December 5, 2010

AIDONE, Italy — They came in throngs. On Friday afternoon hundreds of residents from this tiny hilltop town in eastern Sicily excitedly trekked up the steep slope to the town’s archaeology museum to celebrate the return to Aidone of a treasure trove that was buried nearby some 2,200 years ago and illegally whisked away in more recent times.

This year this cache of 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt objects known as the Morgantina silver was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For decades archaeologists, magistrates and eventually the Italian government had attempted to convince the museum that the pieces had been illegally excavated 30 years ago from Morgantina, an ancient Greek settlement whose ruins lie next to Aidone.
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More coverage of the statue located by chance in a New York gallery thirty years after being stolen from a museum in Rome.

From:
New York Post

Roamin’ cop nabs hot art
Italian sleuth spots statue in NYC gallery
By CLEMENTE LISI
Last Updated: 7:36 AM, November 20, 2010

An eagle-eyed Italian cop was hailed as a hero yesterday for spotting a precious stolen statue in a Manhattan art gallery — leading to the miraculous homecoming of that artifact and another filched sculpture.

The items, stolen in Italy in the 1980s and worth about $680,000 apiece, were unveiled in a small museum outside Rome, thanks to the police art-squad expert who was on vacation when he saw one of them during a stroll up Madison Avenue.
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An Italian policeman on holiday in New York spotted a statue stolen from a museum in Rome in 1980.

From:
Agence France Presse

Italian policeman in New York finds stolen statue
(AFP) – Nov 19, 2010

ROME — The return from the United States of a precious Roman artefact stolen from an Italy museum is thanks to an Italian policeman who strolled through New York on holiday this year, officials said on Friday.

Walking down Madison Avenue, the officer from Italy’s cultural heritage police noticed the marble torso on sale for 350,000 dollars (256,000 euros) in a gallery’s display, they said.
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