Chasing Aphrodite (16 page)

True's side prevailed. The defense attorneys' remaining questions were read into the record with no response from True: Had the Getty ever purchased a work of art contrary to the claim of a foreign government? Had the Getty ever refused to return a work of art claimed by a foreign government? And, specifically, what is the current controversy between Italy and the Getty Museum over the Aphrodite?

The Goldberg trial caused a media frenzy. In the end, the mosaic pieces were ordered returned to Cyprus. In upholding the decision, an appellate court recognized the moral weight of the 1970 UNESCO Convention. While the treaty could not be directly applied to the civil case, the court found that "the policy that the Act embodies is clear: at the very least, we should not sanction illegal traffic in stolen cultural property." The case, the court concluded, served as a reminder "that greed and callous disregard for the property, history and culture of others cannot be countenanced by the world community or by this court."

In art circles, the case of the Cypriot mosaic became an often-cited lesson about the need for due diligence when purchasing ancient art. Goldberg had ignored obvious warning signs, prompting one expert witness to testify, "All the red flags are up, all the red lights are on, all the sirens are blaring." It also marked True's emergence as a model of curatorial ethics, earning a note of praise from the appellate court, which referred to her in its decision as "the aptly named Dr. True."

In the midst of the case—and a year after the Berlin Declaration—True organized what was billed as the first American summit to bring together the warring factions in the debate over antiquities. In a sign of the growing tensions, the symposium at the Getty was an off-the-record affair. There were no minutes of meetings, and participants were guaranteed that their involvement, as well as their names, would be kept confidential.

After the symposium, True lent her support to the country most harmed by rampant antiquities looting. Meeting with Italian officials at an October 1991 conference in Rome, the Getty curator offered to bridge the divide between American museums and source countries. She suggested that Italy and the Getty join forces to protect Italy's cultural heritage. Picking up the cause of long-term loans that had been articulated in the Berlin Declaration, she said that if Italy was more generous in lending valuable items in its museum basements, American museums would not be forced to buy similar artifacts on the market and could spend their acquisition money helping preserve Italy's cultural heritage.

As a sign of her sincerity, True offered to return one of the Getty's pieces that had raised questions: a fifth-century lead tablet acquired ten years before. The Lex Sacra, as it was called, was inscribed with instructions for a religious ritual and had been traced to a sanctuary of Demeter near the ancient Sicilian town of Selinunte. Despite the tablet's historical significance, the Getty had never taken it out of storage because it was not deemed beautiful enough for public display. Now, without any prompting, the curator was willing to give it back.

W
HILE BUILDING HER
credentials as a reformer, True discreetly maintained her contacts in the art market, keeping her eye open for pieces of interest. As a curator, her primary job was still acquiring objects for the Getty's antiquities collection.

In March 1992, True received another unsolicited offer, similar in many ways to the one she had received about the Byzantine mosaic. This one came via fax from someone in Munich. In slanting, awkward English, the handwritten note offered a "fantastic examplar [
sic
]": a funerary wreath crafted in Greece four hundred years before Christ, finely wrought in more than a pound of pure gold. The note was signed by a "Dr. Victor Preis," who claimed to be a Swiss antiquities collector. True had never heard of him.

"If the museum is interest to buy it," Preis wrote, "please contact me." The words "as soon as possible" were crossed out and replaced with the word "today." He left two Munich phone numbers. His asking price: $1.6 million.

The photos Preis sent soon after showed a gleaming halo of delicate foil leaves sprouting from two intertwined solid-gold branches. Even in the wreath's slightly crumpled state, the craftsmanship was remarkable, far grander than that of a smaller wreath the Getty had acquired several years earlier. This wreath's dense foliage included dozens of leaves and some thirty flowers with finely wrought pistils and stamens—detailed enough to distinguish them as bellflowers intermingled with myrtle, apple, and pear blossoms. Several had an inlay of what looked like deep blue glass applied to their petals. True noted a signature touch that dated the wreath to the peak of Hellenistic naturalism: the branches were sculpted in such detail that she could make out the thin skin of bark at their cut ends. The effect was mesmerizing—a funerary adornment fit for the head of a king.

No wreaths of this quality had come on the market in the past twenty-five years. True recognized that if the Getty bought the wreath, it would possess a uniquely important specimen of ornamentation used by the elites of ancient Macedonia, perhaps even the family of Alexander the Great. True also knew that an object of such beauty and rarity had not appeared out of nowhere. Had it been on the market long, word of its existence would have already reached her from various sources.

On a business trip to Switzerland, True described the wreath and the circumstances surrounding its offer to the Zurich antiquities dealer Frieda Tchakos. The dealer was painfully direct: she had heard talk in the market about the men behind the object. "Don't touch it. These guys are not people you should deal with," she warned.

But True ignored Tchakos's advice and made arrangements to see the wreath. She checked into the Hotel zum Storchen, distinguished by its flower-draped balconies overlooking the Limmat River in Zurich's historic section. The day before the appointed meeting, a cable arrived from an associate of Preis's named L. J. Kovacevic. "First of all verey welcome in Zurich," the cable said. "Meeting to show gold wreath to your respectable self will be ... at 10:30 am Zurich time in the present of the owner."

The next morning, True took a taxi to the Swiss Volksbank on Kirchgasse, just across the Limmat from her hotel. Preis and Kovacevic were waiting for True in a private vault.

The details of what transpired in the bank vault remain unclear. True engaged in a troubling conversation with the two men, who appear to have attempted a heavy-handed impersonation of wealthy European collectors. There was confusion, a confrontation. The meeting ended badly, and True left without making a deal.

Days after the botched meeting, Christoph Leon, the Austrian antiquities dealer who had acted as a middleman in the deal, sent an apologetic note to the rattled curator. The wreath's "actual owners" had no connection to the men in the vault, Leon insisted. The owners, he said, were "profoundly shocked, realizing the full dimension of the disaster."

"I must say that the happenings in Zurich were certainly bizarre," True replied via fax when she arrived back at her office. "I do not think that I have ever had an experience quite like that one! Mr. Kovacevic and whoever was impersonating Dr. Preis have done tremendous damage to a great object."

True said that the Getty was no longer interested in buying the wreath. "I hope that you will find a possible buyer for it, but I am afraid that in our case it is something that is too dangerous for us to be involved with," she explained.

G
REEK AND GERMAN
investigators later concluded that the men True had met with in the vault were likely antiquities smugglers, part of an increasingly sophisticated supply chain run by second-generation Greeks who acted as "mules," carting the fruits of looters in Greece and Turkey to the small circle of antiquities dealers in Zurich, Basel, Geneva, and Munich.

Kovacevic and two Greek partners had shown up in Munich a year earlier with the banged-up wreath in a cardboard box, shopping it around like a secondhand hat. But rather than sell it through an established dealer, who would reap most of the profits, a friend suggested that they try going directly to the Getty. Kovacevic had sent the initial fax to True, inventing "Dr. Preis" as a cover story. The men had almost pulled the deal off but had blown it with their performance in the bank vault.

Or so it seemed.

Four months after turning down the wreath, True changed her mind. Perhaps it was the reduced price, down to $1.2 million, that caused her to reconsider. Or the fact that Leon, a dealer the Getty had done business with before, now presented himself as the sole owner of the piece. Whatever the motivation, True wrote to Leon saying that the Getty intended to go ahead with the purchase.

A month later, the museum sent the standard inquiries to Greek and Italian authorities about the wreath. Both countries scrambled to stake a claim. Italian archaeologists concluded that the wreath was an important, unique object entirely unknown to scholars and almost certainly looted. Greek officials, meanwhile, informed the Getty that because no record of the funerary wreath existed, it was likely "the product of illicit excavations in Greece."

Although the funerary wreath was obviously a recent find, neither country could provide any hard evidence about where or when it had been looted, and True proceeded with the acquisition. In June 1993, she presented her proposal to the board of trustees' acquisition committee, which had gathered in the museum's Founders Room. The room was dominated by an oil painting of J. Paul Getty—one of the museum's few reminders of its founder. True's report failed to mention her meeting with the unsavory characters in Zurich or the wreath's suspect history. The only hint of its origins came in this clinical assessment: "Virtually all surviving examples [of such wreaths] come from tombs."

The following afternoon, the wreath was one of eighteen art objects, including a Michelangelo, that the full board voted unanimously to buy. In the museum's paperwork, Leon said that the wreath came from "a private Swiss collection." He left the box for "country of origin" blank. The Getty wired $1.2 million to a Swiss bank account in the names of Leon and the two Greeks.

On the same day that the board voted to buy the wreath, Angelo Bottini, the archaeological director for Basilicata, the region in the arch of Italy's heel, sent a stern letter to True. "Do you have any idea how many archaeological sites have been plundered so that a single object can reach the market? How much scientific evidence we have lost? How many other objects have been destroyed?" he wrote. "Acquiring from the market is a crime against science and against the cultural and historic patrimony of another country."

True replied defensively, "I have proposed publicly to your Ministry that we would agree to stop collecting (which is our legal right and privilege) if and when your country would be willing to lend us works of art for display long term. Our greatest hope is that someday the funds that now go for acquisition could be put to more constructive use conserving the monuments that so badly need them."

True added that the Getty's new wreath had almost certainly come from northern Greece, where two similar wreaths were on exhibit at a local archaeological museum. Italy, she concluded, had no claim to it.

Later, when Greek authorities demanded the wreath's return, True cited the Italian claim to argue that the wreath was almost certainly from Italy. The Italians had already investigated the wreath, she added, and found "nothing amiss."

O
N OCTOBER
12, 1994, the Getty Museum inaugurated a stunning exhibit of ancient art. A Passion for Antiquities presented the collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, wealthy New Yorkers who had accumulated some of the finest Greek and Roman antiquities in private hands over a decade of aggressive collecting.

The exhibit was a coup for Marion True, whose friendship with the couple had begun eight years earlier, while the curator was helping colleagues at other museums scout ancient bronze statues for a traveling exhibit called The Gods Delight. A close friend had suggested that True take a look at what the Fleischmans had acquired. The curator was skeptical—few private collections had museumquality pieces. But after visiting the couple's modernist apartment at United Nations Plaza, where the pieces were displayed in rooms featuring full-length windows overlooking the East River, True was impressed.

It was the start of a close relationship, one of those art world entanglements that mixes business with pleasure, friendship with money, a shared passion for art with mutual back scratching. Like True, the Fleischmans came from modest origins. Larry was the son of Russian immigrants who operated a Detroit carpet distributorship. While serving as a GI in France during World War II, he developed an interest in art after a visit to the Roman ruins at Besançon, an ancient French city near the Swiss border. There he met a local doctor who invited him home to view his collection of artifacts, which were lovingly integrated into the décor. When Larry returned to Detroit, he and his new wife, Barbara, a onetime public school teacher and insurance company secretary, began collecting American paintings as a hobby. Larry quickly found that he had a natural eye for art, and buying paintings became a compulsion, consuming his time and much of his money. He sought out and befriended the artists whose work he acquired. Even when he grew rich as one of the original investors in Milwaukee's first color television station, he found himself in debt because of his art habit. Although Larry was the one constantly looking for new pieces, Barbara had the final say on every purchase.

As the couple's holdings grew, so did their reputation within Detroit's social set. The Fleischmans were the first Jews to be listed in the blue book of exclusive Grosse Pointe. Larry befriended the director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, was appointed by the mayor to chair the institute's board, and spearheaded efforts to raise money for a new wing. In the early 1960s, Larry finally surrendered to the passion that had overtaken his life. The Fleischmans moved to New York City, center of the American art scene, and Larry bought an interest in the Kennedy Galleries, one of the country's oldest and most prestigious American art showrooms. He and Barbara threw their support behind the venerable Met, eventually underwriting a chair in American art and endowing two related galleries.