Maxwell L. Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, leaped to the defense of Michael Brand and the J. Paul Getty Museum in a news report broadcast Wednesday on NPR.
Unmentioned in the radio report is that Anderson, a Greek and Roman specialist, played an important role in the development of the Getty’s antiquities collection: He was a key advisor to Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, whose extensive collection of ancient art was later given to the Getty.
Anderson wrote a number of the entries for the Getty-published catalogue of their collection, “A Passion for Antiquities.” Among the 26 objects that the Getty has now agreed to return to Italy is the object on that catalogue’s cover—a South Etruscan terracotta of a Maenad and Silenos dancing (see Item 20 on this illustrated list of the 26 objects).
Here’s what Anderson said on NPR, reacting to the breakdown of negotiations between the Getty’s director, Brand, and Italy’s culture minister, Francesco Rutelli:
I suppose the Getty makes a convenient foil by virtue of its extraordinary wealth and the fact that it has a past, in the 1970s and early ’80s, of behaving with less than exemplary standards.
But I think that all changed, ironically, under Marion True‘s tenure as curator and under John Walsh as director, and Michael Brand is simply trying to think to move the ball down the line to a kind of reciprocal approach of understanding that the past practices of the museum were not on par with what is expected today.
The Fleischman Collection was acquired by the Getty on John Walsh‘s and Marion True’s watch.