More on the Getty’s “Aphrodite” Acolytes

Maybe the Getty’s appointment of Malcolm Bell III to its panel assessing Italy’s claim to the museum’s so-called “Aphrodite” or “Morgantina Venus” is not as gutsy as it appeared to me when I wrote yesterday’s post.
According to a Nov. 9, 2006 article in the NY Times, “Malcolm Bell III, an archaeologist who has directed a dig at Morgantina for many years, says there is no scholarly evidence to suggest that the [Aphrodite] statue came from there.”
And from Bell’s own Nov. 28, 2005 Op-Ed piece in the Times:
The Getty’s controversial ”Morgantina Aphrodite” is an extremely rare example of the sort of cult statue that once stood within a Greek temple. While, as some have asserted, this remarkable work may come from Morgantina (a site in Sicily where I serve as co-director of excavations), no proof of its origin is known, and its subject is just as uncertain. The market destroyed the evidence.