Several previously confidential details of the antiquities agreement between the Getty Museum and Italy were publicly outed by Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri at the conference on “Return of Cultural Objects” that I recently attended in Athens. And in conversation with me after his presentation (during which which I identified myself as a journalist), he discussed the continuing legal ordeal in Italy of former Getty curator Marion True.
First, here are provisions of the Getty agreement (other than the previously publicized return by the Getty of 39 objects, with the “Cult Statue of a Goddess” to come in 2010) that he disclosed in the public forum, which included many journalists:
—Medium and long-term loans to the Getty Trust, on a continuing and rotating sequential basis, of archaeological materials and contexts (for instance, the whole burial set of a tomb) for the purpose of appreciation of the Italian cultural heritage. [I previously reported what Getty Museum director Michael Brand had said to me about these proposed loans, here.]
—Excavation permits on joint or unilateral projects, consenting to the temporary export of excavation materials for their study, restoration and publication.
—The Italian Ministry [of Culture] agrees to facilitate and support a dialogue between the curators of the Getty Museum, on the one hand, and the curators and custodians of Italian museums and archaeologists who work in Italy, on the other hand.
—The Ministry further guarantees that the Getty curators shall have reasonable access to Italian museum collections, whether on display or not.
Ferri added that “this agreement aims more at an ethical answer to past and future problems, rather than for a legal answer and that the General Secretariat of UNESCO, where the agreement was filed, was “recognized as a mediator very satisfactory to both parties,” for resolution of further issues that might arise.
Now what about the Sacrificial Curator, still on trial in Rome on criminal charges involving allegedly illegal trafficking in antiquities? If Ferri has his way, Marion True will continue twisting slowly in the wind. Having previously indicated to American reporters that the Getty repatriation agreement would likely cause him to go easy on True, he now asserts (as he had originally) that criminal prosecution is independent of civil agreements, and must continue taking its excruciatingly prolonged course. Here’s what he told me:
I used to worry about how long it was taking. But the more it lasts, the more will be the shame.
He also conceded that Italy already has an abundance of objects comparable to those that it insists, on moral and legal grounds, must be returned:
We don’t need the objects we have repatriated.
Exactly.
That’s why I stated in my recent LA Times Op-Ed piece, Make Art Loans, Not War, that it’s time for compromise solutions, whereby objects of a type already fully represented in source countries’ collections can stay where they are. The ownership would need to be transferred, necessitating rewriting the catalogues and labels, designating them as loans from the countries of origin.