The New York Times
December 10, 2005

Doubts on Donors' Collection Cloud Met Antiquities Project
By HUGH EAKIN
and RANDY KENNEDY

A decade ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art embarked on a vastly 
ambitious project: the transformation of its dark and crowded Greek and 
Roman galleries into one of the premier spaces for antiquities in the 
Western Hemisphere.

In 2007, the project will culminate in the opening of a huge colonnaded 
Roman court that Philippe de Montebello, the Met's director, has 
described as "a grand orchestral coda" to years of work reinstalling 
the museum's classical collections. But as the project nears 
completion, it also threatens to become one of the Met's biggest 
headaches, forcing the museum to address difficult questions about the 
ethics of collecting practices.

Among the most generous financial supporters of the new galleries is 
Shelby White, a Met trustee, who with her husband, the financier Leon 
Levy, amassed one of the world's best private antiquities collections. 
Objects from their collection have been on loan to the Met for years, 
and it has long been assumed in the art world that the trove will be 
donated to the museum. Mr. Levy, who died in 2003, and Ms. White gave 
$20 million to create the new Roman gallery, which will bear their 
names.

But Italian investigators now say they have photographs and documents 
tracing nine Levy-White works to an art dealer convicted in 2004 of 
trafficking in illegal antiquities. Two of these, a large Greek vase 
and a bowl depicting Zeus and his cupbearer Ganymede, are on view at 
the Met.

Such revelations are emerging as Italy opens an aggressive campaign to 
force the Met to return objects in its permanent collection that it 
contends were looted from Italian soil.

It is not the first time that evidence has surfaced suggesting that 
objects in the Levy-White collection were illicitly acquired. Several 
other works that have resided in the couple's collection have been 
claimed by foreign governments, and some of those objects have been the 
subject of legal action. For much of the last 15 years, the collection 
has also been dogged by criticism from archaeologists who say that many 
works were unknown before surfacing in the collection - a strong 
indication, they contend, that the objects were unearthed recently and 
passed through the art market in violation of cultural-property laws.

As the acquisition practices of American museums draw intense 
international scrutiny, the situation presents a growing public 
relations problem for the Met, if not also a diplomatic and legal one. 
The Levy-White collection could prove a complicating factor in 
discussions between the Met and the Italian Culture Ministry, which 
says it has evidence that more than 20 objects that the Met already 
owns were illegally removed from Italy. As the case has unfolded, the 
Italians have issued subpoenas to the Met through the United States 
Justice Department.

"It's very embarrassing for them to be in this situation, and it was 
avoidable," said James C. Wright, chairman of the department of 
classical and Near Eastern archaeology at Bryn Mawr College, which has 
adopted a policy discouraging its scholars from accepting money from an 
archaeology fund established by Ms. White and her husband.

In a telephone interview, Ms. White, an occasional freelance 
contributor to The New York Times, declined to comment on the recent 
evidence presented by Italy or on her plans for the collection, 
although she confirmed that it was destined for public institutions. 
She vigorously defended her collecting activities, noting that her aim 
has always been to make artifacts available to the public and to 
scholars. "I've published my collection, I've exhibited it," she said. 
"I'm not hiding things. If it turns out there is something I shouldn't 
have bought, I will act appropriately."

Italian officials have made clear that any move by the Met to acquire 
the collection or to put other works on view that appear to have been 
unearthed in Italy in recent years could have consequences in Rome. "It 
would be a problem if the works included those whose provenance we have 
questioned," said Giuseppe Proietti, a senior official in charge of 
cultural heritage for the Italian government.

The issue is particularly sensitive because of parallels drawn by 
several people close to the collectors between the Levy-White 
antiquities and those of another New York couple, Barbara Fleischman 
and her husband, Lawrence, who died in 1997. Italian prosecutors charge 
that some works purchased by the Fleischmans came from illicit sources. 
Those objects figure prominently in the trial of Marion True, a former 
curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles who has been 
indicted in Rome on charges of antiquities trafficking.

The Fleischmans, who were active supporters of the Met in the 1980's 
but eventually gave their collection to the Getty, spent millions of 
dollars on the same kinds of antiquities that Ms. White and Mr. Levy 
did, and did business with many of the same dealers.

Recently, the Met has seemed to be trying to distance itself from Ms. 
White's artifacts. Shortly after a meeting with Italian culture 
officials last month, Mr. de Montebello indicated that any questions 
raised about the Levy-White collection were for Ms. White and the 
Italians to sort out.

In a telephone interview this week, he added, "The Levy-White 
collection presents very little concern to me because it is not mine."

Yet it sometimes seems as though the Met is of two minds. Mr. de 
Montebello also said he hoped to receive at least some of Ms. White's 
collection. And he has resisted taking steps that would harm the Met's 
relations with Ms. White, continually deflecting questions about works 
that have come under Italian scrutiny.

"Obviously it's awkward dealing with a board member," said Jane 
Waldbaum, the president of the Archaeological Institute of America, 
which has long taken a strong stand against museums that collect 
antiquities with an unclear provenance. "It's very difficult when you 
are dealing with a potential donor to say: 'We'll pick and choose. We 
don't want any of your hot items.' "

It is a conundrum for many large American museums: as they rely on 
wealthy collectors for donations of rare antiquities, they are 
struggling to balance those relationships with growing pressure to 
adopt higher ethical standards for acquisitions. Mr. de Montebello 
defended the Met's collecting and display practices, while arguing that 
"with every passing year, standards - legal and ethical - change."

"So we, as best as we can do it, conform to the ethical and legal 
standards of the day," he said.

Mr. Levy and Ms. White began buying antiquities in 1970, and their 
collection, which includes hundreds of bronze, stone and terra-cotta 
objects, ranges from prehistoric Aegean art to works from Central Asia 
and the Middle East. Yet it is their sizable holdings of Greek and 
Roman art that are attracting most of the attention as Italian 
officials try to retrieve similar objects from the Getty Museum and 
other institutions.

According to archaeologists and Italian court documents, several works 
in the Levy-White collection appear to have been smuggled out of Italy 
through the same network of dealers who sold the disputed works to the 
Fleischmans.

For example, Robin Symes, a London dealer, sold many works to the 
Fleischmans and to the Getty. Investigators have traced these works to 
Giacomo Medici, the Italian art dealer who was convicted in Rome of 
illegal trafficking in artifacts. According to written evidence used by 
Italian prosecutors to convict Mr. Medici, a copy of which was obtained 
this week by The Times, Mr. Levy and Ms. White bought at least six 
objects from Mr. Symes that have also been traced to Mr. Medici. (Mr. 
Symes has not been charged in the continuing investigations.)

Among these are a small bronze statue they purchased from Mr. Symes for 
$1.2 million in 1990, just months before it went on view in a major 
exhibition at the Met, "Glories of the Past: Ancient Art From the 
Shelby White and Leon Levy Collection." Thirteen photographs showing 
the same statue still covered with dirt were found in the possession of 
Mr. Medici, according to the Italian documents, which cite a dealer's 
receipt indicating that the statue came from central Italy.

In the 1980's both the Fleischmans and Mr. Levy and Ms. White were 
widely known in the antiquities trade for their aggressive pursuit of 
top objects. In the late 1980's and early 90's, both couples were also 
charter members of the Philodoroi, a small group of wealthy patrons 
founded to support the Met's Greek and Roman department.

Underscoring the close connections between the two couples and the 
objects they acquired, two fragments of a Pompeian fresco from the 
Fleischman collection fitted like a puzzle piece with a third fragment 
in the Levy-White collection. It is unknown how the piece reached Mr. 
Levy and Ms. White, but the Fleischmans' two pieces are mentioned in 
the case against Ms. True - and have been linked by Italian 
investigators to other Pompeian fresco fragments confiscated from Mr. 
Medici that are of the same condition, style and age.

In many ways, Ms. White is the profile of an ideal trustee, and not 
just for her financial largess. Beginning in the late 1980's, she and 
her husband, along with several other collectors like the Fleischmans, 
brought enormous energy to a Greek and Roman department that had for 
years been known for its lack of exhibition programming and its dry 
display of Greek vases, lined up neatly in rows. She has also been 
active on the board, serving on the acquisitions committee. (Another 
member of that committee is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, chairman emeritus 
of The New York Times Company.)

In 1990 the major Levy-White show at the Met established the couple's 
collection as one of the most spectacular of its kind. But by bringing 
it to world attention, the show raised serious questions in many 
quarters about how it was acquired.

The Turkish government contended that one object in the exhibition, 
part of a statue known as "Weary Herakles," was stolen in 1980 from an 
excavation site in southern Turkey. In 1993, the couple reached a legal 
settlement arranging the return of a group of Roman bronze objects that 
had been taken from a private farm in England before Mr. Levy and Ms. 
White bought them from a New York dealer.

In a lengthy study in 1999, two prominent British archaeologists, David 
Gill and Christopher Chippindale, determined that 93 percent of the 
objects in the Met's Levy-White show had no known provenance.

continues at

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/arts/design/10coll.html

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