The lionization of the late dealer in dicey antiquities, Robert Hecht, on the occasion of the publication of his memoir, apparently struck a nerve with the Getty Museum’s ex-curator of antiquities, Marion True: In her recent interview with Washington Post reporter Geoff Edgers, True again vented her bitterness about how she had been left to twist slowly in the wind by her colleagues and her superiors, including then Getty director John Walsh, who had overseen her controversial acquisitions:
I never understood is why American museums did what they did. And my colleagues and my bosses never, ever stood up for me. They acted as if I had done all this stuff on my own, which would have been impossible to do. They just vanished.”
There was just one surprise to me in today’s Washington Post piece: Walsh told Edgers that he had once given a deposition explaining why True, as a curator, should not have been held responsible for Getty acquisitions.
Really? A lot of good that did her.
Like Hecht, True had been put on trial in Italy in connect with illicitly trafficking in antiquities. Neither was convicted: Their legal ordeals ended when the statute of limitations on the charges against them expired.
“She was on trial for one reason,” the then Italian prosecutor, Paolo Ferri, recently told Edgers. “To show an example of what Italy could do.”
To me, Ferri had once said: “I used to worry about how long it [the trial] was taking. But the more it lasts, the more will be the shame.”
The true “shame” was Ferri’s, in prolonging her ordeal.
Another surprise to me today was that Max Anderson, now director of the Dallas Museum of Art, chose to tweet a link to today’s Washington Post piece:
The curator who vanished http://t.co/qX1IMf1jP3
— Maxwell L. Anderson (@MaxAndersonUSA) August 20, 2015
Max apparently wanted to call attention to the fact that Edgers had quoted him as an authority:
“I don’t think anybody stuck their neck out,” said Max Anderson….“Her [True’s] indictment was a shock to the system. Everybody was watching with concern for their own fate. I don’t think it was the finest hour of the profession.”
As it happened, it wasn’t Max’s “finest hour” either. As I previously wrote:
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).
It seems as if almost everyone involved in the Getty’s antiquities mess has gone on to professionally productive lives, with reputations reasonably intact…except for Marion True.