Following the End of Marion True’s trial in Italy, she is now able to speak freely about the case. What is revealed in this interview suggests that the trial was far more of a political exercise than it was one specifically aimed at her. It also suggests that the Getty was quick to distance itself from the whole thing & jumped at the opportunity to write things off as the actions of a single person – an approach that suggests a complete lack of accountability within the Museum in terms of due diligence when acquiring artefacts.

From:
The New Yorker

October 14, 2010
Marion True on her Trial and Ordeal
Posted by Hugh Eakin

On Wednesday morning, in a Roman courtroom, the long-running criminal case against the former Getty Museum curator Marion True was dismissed. In less than ten minutes of deliberation, judges approved a motion by True’s lawyers to stop the proceedings—which, as I described in The New Yorker back in 2007, concerned classical art of allegedly illicit Italian provenance acquired by the Getty Museum in the nineteen-seventies, eighties, and nineties—because the statute of limitations on all charges had expired.

It was a paradoxical end to a trial that has run for more than five years and has been a fulcrum of Italy’s efforts to reclaim major works from leading American collections. Since the trial began, no fewer than five museums—as well as several prominent collectors and dealers—have entered agreements to relinquish prize examples of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art to Italy. The American Association of Art Museum Directors has adopted strict new guidelines for acquiring antiquities (pdf), and many museums have all but given up on buying classical art.
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