Boston Got a Big Statue; the Met Gets a Small Drinking Cup

Terracotta%20kylix%20.JPG
Terracotta Kylix, Greek, Laconian, ca. 560-500 B.C., composite of a man, a sea creature and snakes, attributed to the Typhon Painter from Cerveteri, necropolis of Bufaloreccia, lent by the Republic of Italy

Size and ceremony aren't everything, but the low-key loan by Italy to the Metropolitan Museum of an 8 1/2-inch wide drinking cup (above), displayed inconspicuously today in a case with other small objects, contrasted sharply with the dramatic public unveiling yesterday of the colossal statue of "Eirene" at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Italian journalists and CultureGrrl tagged along this afternoon as the Met's director, Philippe de Montebello, and Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli met face-to-face for the first time. Rutelli, an urbane, articulate and media-savvy politician (married to a prominent Italian journalist) was formerly mayor of Rome and since April has been Italy's culture minister and, more importantly, its deputy prime minister.

After exchanging pleasantries in Italian, French and English. and admiring objects arrayed in the Met's galleries, de Montebello and Rutelli held a brief closed-door meeting, after which Rutelli pronounced himself completely satisfied with Italy's cooperative relationship with the Met, and de Montebello recited a list of the many loans made by the Met to current exhibitions in Italy. When I asked Philippe whether the subject of Italy's designs on certain objects from the collection of Met benefactor Shelby White came up during the private discussion, he shrugged and was silent.

Journalists got a better sense of Rutelli's determination to repatriate illicitly exported antiquities at an event earlier in the day at the Italian Cultural Institute. To general applause from the mostly Italian audience, he publicly declared: "All works of art that have been stolen have to come home!"

In conversation with me afterwards, he reiterated Italy's position that the Getty's bronze statue of an athlete should be regarded "stolen," because it was "smuggled" out of Italy without an export permit. He also took issue with the Getty's assertion that the statue had been found in international waters. But more important to him is what he described as the "moral aspect" of the controversy.

November 29, 2006 5:00 PM | | Comments (0)

Categories:

Leave a comment

Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on the Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

Blogroll

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on November 29, 2006 5:00 PM.

Golden Opportunities Missed at AMNH's Gold Show was the previous entry in this blog.

BlogBack: Christian Kleinbub Takes the Getty's Side is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads



AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.