BlogBack from the Grave: Thomas Hoving on the Getty Bronze

"Victorious Youth," Greek, 300 - 100 B.C., J. Paul Getty Museum

Did the J. Paul Getty Museum act in good faith when it acquired the Getty Bronze? Back in December 2006, in this post, I concluded no.

What I wrote back then, and, more importantly, what the late Thomas Hoving, the Metropolitan Museum's former director, wrote to me in a published CultureGrrl BlogBack, becomes freshly relevant in light of Jason Felch's article in today's LA Times, reporting that Friday's closing arguments in an Italian trial will refer to a 1976 letter that demonstrates (in Felch's words) "that the billionaire oilman [J. Paul Getty] and another potential buyer were troubled by the questionable legal status of the statue." This letter will be discussed, Felch reported, in Friday's closing arguments for a trial in Pesaro, Italy.

Stephen Clark, the Getty's attorney, may well be correct that "Italy has no legal foundation for a claim." But the question of whether the bronze was purchased in good faith is another matter.

Here's what I wrote three years ago:

Even at the time of the Getty's 1977 purchase of the bronze, there were suspicions that something was fishy about the masterpiece fished from the waters. Tom Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum, made this clear in his CultureGrrl BlogBack last month, and again two days ago in discussions with the Getty's lawyers, who belatedly sought his recollections from that period.

Hoving, who had been involved in an effort, later abandoned, to jointly acquire the bronze with collector J. Paul Getty, has asserted that Getty, concerned about the bronze's ownership history, had refused to acquire it without written authorization from Italy. The J. Paul Getty Museum, without such written authorization, went ahead with the purchase after Getty's death.

Hoving also told me that he had urged the Getty Museum to search its own files for the documented evidence of what he had told them.

And here's the BlogBack from Hoving that I published on Nov. 30, 2006:

The old man, J. Paul, insisted before he purchased the bronze (to share with the Met in exchange for the Met's lending the Boscotrecase frescoes the the Getty indefinitely) that the Italian government grant permission in writing [for the two U.S. museums] to acquire and exhibit it.

My negotiations with Artemis and Heinz Herzer [who eventually sold the bronze to the Getty alone] collapsed when Herzer insisted on $4.2 million. Getty wanted to pay $3.9 million. [The Getty Museum paid $3.95 million for the bronze in 1977, after J. Paul Getty's death.]

I had already informed Artemis and Herzer that the Getty and the Met would not complete the transaction until the full papers were in hand from the proper Italian authorities. All this is in the Getty files.

Jiri Frel [the Getty's then antiquities curator] pushed for the purchase after Getty's death, even though he knew of the old man's demands.

The return of this illicit work of art has nothing to do with legal issues or with how many inches within international waters the bronze was situated in when it was snagged in the nets of the boat, the "Feruccio Ferri." It has to do with the wishes of the man whose largesse paid for everything at the Getty---including [director Michael] Brand's salary, the expenses for the Trust officers and the fees for their platoons of lawyers.

Why can't the Getty simply respect the donor's [J. Paul Getty's] wishes and hand it back to Italy?

Incidentally, Felch, who has tirelessly chronicled the Getty controversies for the LA Times, now informs me that his book on the Getty, co-authored with ex-LA Timeser Ralph Frammolino, is due out in 2011.