Great News: Getty Museum Reaches A Pact With Sicily

This will get lots of press, so I won’t dwell on it — let’s just get the news out:

The Getty Museum just announced that it has reached an agreement with the Sicilian Ministry of Culture and Sicilian Identity for a long-term collaboration including exhibitions, object conservation, scholarly research, conferences and earthquake protection of collections.

The first exhibition sounds very exciting:

[It] will investigate Sicily during the Classical and Hellenistic Periods (the fifth through third centuries B.C.), an era that witnessed the emergence of its founding Greek colonies as some of the wealthiest and most powerful metropolises in the Mediterranean world. Provisionally entitled Between Greece and Rome: Sicily in the Classical and Hellenistic Period, the exhibition will open at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa in 2013 and will borrow from a number of Sicilian museums as well as from international museums with significant collections of antiquities found in Sicily.

A second will dwell on Selinunte (Selinos), “an important Greek colonial settlement in southwestern Sicily, best known for its Greek temples from the archaic and classical periods.” Date for that is not yet determined.

 

In conservation, the press release says this:

 

The Marble Youth from Agrigento (above) will be brought to the Getty in the fall of 2010 for the development of a custom earthquake isolation base to protect it while on display. The object then will be placed on view at the Getty Villa with the museum’s permanent collection. Similarly, an attic red-figured krater by the Niobid Painter from Agrigento will come to the Getty Villa in April 2010, and after the development of a custom earthquake isolation base, will be displayed with the permanent collection.

 

Finally, a remarkable marble statue known as the Youth from Motya (left) will also be studied in order to develop a new seismic restraint and to improve its aesthetic presentation. Following the conservation efforts, the youth from Motya will be included in the exhibition Between Greece and Rome. When all three works are returned to Sicily, they will be accompanied by their new seismic isolators for display in their home museums.

On first glance — just reading the press release, not the fine print, if there is any — this is all great news. Congratulations to both parties.

 

Here’s a link to the press release.