Stealing History
Cultural treasures are being looted--and museums and collectors are turning a blind eye
And that case, Ferri insists, is a strong one. "Part of the evidence we are using is the same that convicted Medici," he says. And, Ferri says, so much new evidence is accumulating "we may want a second indictment [against Hecht and True]. That is possible later on" before the trial concludes. There's certainly time: The trial began last July, and because the court meets only once or twice a month, it won't end until sometime next year.
Robert Hecht is the scion of a prominent Baltimore family that founded a chain of department stores by the same name. He's lived in Europe for decades and worked on a doctorate in archaeology until 1950, when he began selling art instead. In his long, colorful career, Hecht dealt with some of the world's greatest museums. In 2001, a police raid on the Paris apartment of his ex-wife uncovered an 88-page gold mine: a "memoir" in which Hecht describes decades of dealing in unprovenanced antiquities.
Marion True, 57, was once the very model of the modern museum curator. Worldly and scholarly, she reigned for nearly 20 years over the antiquities department at the Getty, where she earned a reputation as an aggressive and enlightened amasser of ancient artifacts. A Harvard Ph.D. who wrote her thesis on the red-figured vases of ancient Greece, she has expressed concerns about the trafficking of looted antiquities. In 1999, she sent three objects back to Italy. And in 1995, the Getty announced it would shun antiquities that were not part of established collections or otherwise documented. Yet eight months later, the museum paid collectors Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman $20 million for 33 pieces and accepted from them nearly 270 more objects as a donation worth $40 million. When questions were raised about some of the items,the Getty insisted that its own publishing and display of the items two years earlier constituted provenance. Says Tubb: "It made a complete mockery of the policy." The Italian prosecutors call it laundering. "This is part of the indictment," Ferri says. "It was a way to make [the objects] clean."
Grecian holiday. True resigned from the Getty last October after it surfaced that she had received a $400,000 loan in 1995 arranged by the late Christo Michailidis, a Greek shipping magnate who was also the partner of Robin Symes, a London dealer with links to Medici, who had sold many items to the Getty. True used the money to buy a holiday villa on the Greek island of Paros. A year later, she received a $400,000 loan from the Fleischmans, which she used to pay off the first. For now, True is keeping mum, says her American lawyer, Harry Stang. But she may testify. "A strong defense will be put on, establishing her innocence," Stang says, "and she will be a part of that."
What did Getty officials know, and when did they know it? A Los Angeles Times story, based on leaked internal Getty documents, claimed that Getty officials knew as early as 1985 that Hecht, Medici, and Symes "were selling objects that probably had been looted." An attorney advising the museum called the documents "troublesome" and urged that they not be given to Italian investigators. The attorney argued that they didn't prove that True knew that any "particular item was illegally excavated or demonstrate her intent to join the conspiracy." The Getty declines to discuss True, the trial, or the status of its talks with Italian and Greek officials.
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