Malcolm Bell, professor emeritus of Greek art at the University of Virginia and co-director of the American excavations at Morgantina
We interrupt your urgent business at the beach, swimming pool, tennis courts and golf course to offer you a diversion from today’s Wall Street Journal—archaeologist Malcolm Bell‘s deeply informed but sure-to-be-controversial review of Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino‘s Chasing Aphrodite.
Its chief mission (which also seemed to be a subtext of Hugh Eakin‘s musings about Felcholino’s book in the New York Review of Books) is to offer a spirited defense of the sacrificial curator, Marion True, whose tragic trajectory took her from a prominent position as the Getty Museum’s antiquities curator to beleaguered defendant (now finally off the hook) in an Italian criminal trial, where she essentially took the fall for the entire U.S. antiquities-collecting museum profession.
“Her contributions far outweigh her mistakes,” Bell concludes, after detailing True’s contributions. Felcholino come down hard on her in their book, but offer much well documented evidence for doing so.
While Bell, in his review, does allude to his long-time collegial relationship to True, he fails to fully disclose his direct (if someone tangential) role in the “Aphrodite” saga. He is also a bit player in Felcholino’s book.
I too have a slight conflict of interest in discussing “Chasing Aphrodite,” which is why I’ve been somewhat hesitant to review it: I directly owe my highly enjoyable participation on the “Digging Culture” panel at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference to having been recommended for this desirable gig by Felcholino (two of my three co-panelists). I owe them a debt of gratitude.
Now that you know my mixed emotions on this, I’ll try to overcome my scruples and give you my take on the book in a future post. I did mention, on “Which Way, LA?,” that “Chasing Aphrodite” was “an investigative tour de force” (which it was). But I haven’t said much (aside from a few comments in my CultureGrrl post about that KCRW radio broadcast) about how I regard the authors’ interpretation of the information that they dug up.
My curse in covering the antiquities wars is that I can understand and sympathize with some of the viewpoints on both sides of this contentious debate. I think that also characterizes Bell’s stance, even though he comes at things from the archaeologists’ side.
In the meantime, I assume that Felcholino, on their Chasing Aphrodite blog, will soon weigh in with their reactions to Bell, just as they did with Eakin.