Stealing History
Cultural treasures are being looted--and museums and collectors are turning a blind eye
Back in 1972, $1 million was still an eye-popping amount of cash. But to Robert Hecht, an enterprising American antiquities dealer living in Paris, it was not too much to charge the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an exquisite Greek vase created 500 years before the birth of Christ and painted by one of the acknowledged masters of the craft. The Euphronios krater, as the vessel is known, was clearly rare and beautiful. But it was not, according to most experts, worth $1 million. In fact, most curators and dealers at the time judged the krater's value to be no more than $250,000. "Bullshit," retorts the Met's former director, Thomas Hoving. "If it's a great piece, the price will be huge." And so Hoving paid the price and, in the process, created an art-world monster.
Since the acquisition of the "hot pot of Hoving," as the krater has come to be known, the prices of antiquities have shot skyward. "When the tombaroli [tomb raiders] in Italy heard about the price, they just went crazy," says Peter Watson, a British journalist who has written extensively on the subject. "Everyone realized that, properly presented, quality objects could fetch a fortune." Indeed, by 1985, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was paying $10.2 million for three objects, including a marble statue of Apollo; three years later, it paid $18 million for a marble and limestone statue of Aphrodite, and in 1993, it paid $1.15 million for a Greek gold funerary wreath.
The problem with the burgeoning traffic in antiquities, however, is not so much the price but something far more significant: the provenance. Where are these precious artifacts coming from? And who are their rightful owners? In the case of too many antiquities, the krater included, the answers are very far from clear. And evidence is increasing that more and more artifacts are being illegally excavated from their countries of origin. A recent British study of five large collections totaling 546 objects, for instance, determined that fully 82 percent of the objects were suspect. "However dodgy things look," says Cambridge University archaeologist Christopher Chippindale, "when you discover the truth, it's always worse."
From Italy to Greece to Turkey, countries have long complained about the trade in smuggled artifacts and have been largely unable to stop it. But now, a high-profile investigation in Italy has exposed how a network of prestigious museums, wealthy collectors, and tony auction houses have for years turned a blind eye to the illicit practices of the dealers who supply them with archaeological treasures and ancient art. Standing trial in a Roman courtroom, the 87-year-old Hecht, along with Marion True, the former antiquities curator for Los Angeles's J. Paul Getty Museum, are charged with conspiring to trade in and receive stolen antiquities, specifically 42 items acquired by the Getty. Both have proclaimed their innocence.
The case, which has chilled the antiquities market, raises anew the question of who owns history. Over the centuries, the detritus of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations has steadily found its way into the great museums of the West. Frustrated after decades of losses, countries finally got a weapon in 1970 with a UNESCO treaty banning the illicit trade of cultural property. But the market, fueled by the high prices willingly paid by wealthy collectors and richly endowed museums, continued to grow. Countries of origin regularly protested but often lacked evidence to prove their claims. The Italian investigation has emboldened them, as have new probes in Greece and Egypt and the ongoing efforts to return art stolen by the Nazis.
Rightful home. Already, legal and public pressures are having an effect. The Getty has returned to Italy three suspect items and is discussing with Italy and Greece the fate of several others. The Met has agreed to return to Italy 21 artifacts--including the Euphronios krater--in exchange for long-term loans of other valuable items. "We're in the queer situation where the museums are returning everything, which in a sense means they accept it's looted," says Watson, coauthor of The Medici Conspiracy, excerpted in this issue. As foreign authorities continue their probes, many more repatriations are likely.
Tomb raiders can do irreparable damage to archaeologically significant sites, robbing them of not only their art but their context. "There's been an immense loss of knowledge," says Chippindale, "because a lot of archaeological information comes not from the object but where it was found." The nighttime excavations of the tombaroli are indeed crude: One enterprising Swiss dealer gave raiders chain saws to more quickly cut out frescoes. Collectors and curators argue that buying unprovenanced antiquities preserves many objects that would otherwise be lost forever. But Kathryn Tubb, an archaeologist at University College London, argues: "It's still handling stolen material. All the other arguments may have some validity, but they don't get over that fact." Legitimate buyers also create a huge black market for the tombaroli. Estimates on the size of the trade vary from $100 million to $4 billion annually.
To be sure, curators and collectors have always expressed a willingness to return looted treasures. But therein lies the rub, because the burden of proof rests with the country of origin. "The problem was a complete absence of concrete evidence," explains Tubb. How could countries provide tangible proof of ownership of items looted and smuggled? "Archaeologists always knew what was going on," Tubb adds, and she thinks the museums did, too. "There's been a great element of hubris; they never thought they'd be exposed."
Exposure finally came, in spades, in 1995 when luck and dogged detective work combined to lead the Italian police to a warehouse in Geneva operated by the antiquities trader Giacomo Medici. Inside, authorities found a veritable Aladdin's cave of loot, ranging from marbles and bronzes to frescoes and vases. More important, they uncovered thousands of documents and photos, many of them showing items now in collections when they were still encrusted in dirt.
Suddenly, there was an abundance of a commodity once in short supply: evidence. It took authorities a decade to sift through it, but the results have been impressive. Medici was convicted last year on multiple charges, including the illegal export of looted antiquities. Meanwhile, Gianfranco Becchina, an Italian rival of Medici, is expected to go on trial next year, says Paolo Ferri, the Italian prosecutor handling the cases. Last September, police discovered and raided another Becchina warehouse and uncovered a huge cache of documents they're still examining. And in April, Greek police raided two villas containing 142 artifacts in an operation they say is connected to the True case.
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.
Another character in Ferri's cross hairs is Symes, now bankrupt and fresh out of a British prison where he was held for civil contempt of court in another case. Ferri says he's still investigating Symes. Chillingly, Ferri also doesn't rule out criminal charges against other curators. Howard Spiegler, cochairman of the international art practice at Herrick, Feinstein, a New York law firm, says that is a serious threat. "[Ferri] will want that kind of pressure," if only to force museums to return objects. Italian investigators say they have also linked items in the private New York collection of Shelby White and her late husband, Leon Levy, to Medici.
As the investigation plays out, the Association of Art Museum Directors continues to argue that unprovenanced works should be displayed if they are rare and have historical importance and aesthetic merit. Philippe de Montebello, director of the Met, says "to not consider them would contribute to suppressing knowledge and also denying the public access to what is their artistic heritage."
That kind of defiance aside, it's doubtful that many museums will continue to risk buying or accepting donated antiquities of dubious provenance. "Who needs the embarrassment?" Hoving asks. Moreover, trustees may balk at spending huge sums on items that could end up being taken away. Instead, museums will most likely seek long-term loan arrangements with countries of origin, perhaps in exchange for funding legitimate excavations. Even the Met might have lost some of its appetite for the Levy-White collection, which once seemed destined to be donated to the museum. Next year, it will open a newly built Roman Court, paid for in part by a $20 million donation from the couple. But, de Montebello says, "the Met never planned to display the bulk of the Levy-White collection. Only a handful of loans have ever been contemplated and are still being contemplated."
Watson says the investigation has dealt the looted antiquities market a body blow. "People won't collect them," he says, "if they're not convinced museums will accept them." Indeed, Italian officials say the market in that country has already shrunk by half. Perhaps it's time for the tombaroli to look for day jobs.
This story appears in the June 19, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.