Landmark antiquities trial underway
Getty Museum ex-curator accused of buying looted treasures
(ANSA) - Rome, November 16 - The first ever Italian trial of an American
antiquities curator swung into gear here on Wednesday .
Marion True, former curator of the j. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, is
charged with buying ancient objects she allegedly knew came from tomb
raiders .
True, 56, appeared in court for the first time on Wednesday.
Photo:
http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2005-11-16_1854736.html
As the trial reopened after preliminary legal skirmishes, judges ruled that
the Sicilian regional government and Italian heritage trust Italia Nostra
could stand as co-plaintiffs with the Italian government .
The panel of judges rejected a bid by True's defence to have a judge removed
because he presided over an earlier trial of a Rome dealer in tomb plunder,
Giacomo Medici .
Medici is appealing against a 10-year sentence for receiving and exporting
stolen artefacts .
The new trial is the result of a ten-year investigation. It is part of an
Italian drive to fight the plundering of precious artefacts and art .
Prosecutor Paolo Giorgio Ferri told the court: "Museums have to stop
plundering our cultural heritage." "It harms not only Italy but mankind." A
US art dealer, Robert Hecht, is on trial with True for allegedly providing
the stolen antiquities with bogus provenance certificates in Geneva. Hecht
has yet to attend the trial .
Wednesday's hearing ended with judges setting dates for future sessions up
to June 21 .
True left the courtroom without comment .
Earlier this month, the Getty Museum returned three of the 42 allegedly
stolen Italian treasures that True acquired for the collection .
Italy is pushing for the return of the remaining 39 .
True resigned her post last month when it emerged she had broken a museum
code of conduct by accepting a 400,000-dollar loan from a Getty supplier .
The museum has opened an internal probe into the case .
The 1970 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
convention, which both Italy and the US have signed, bans the import, export
and transfer of ownership of cultural property. Also on Wednesday, it was
learned that the head of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Philippe de
Montebello, has agreed to come to Italy for talks in another case of
suspected looting .
Italian art police spoke to Met officials last week on a US trip in which
they also visited the Getty .
The US press recently reported that Italy had amassed the strongest evidence
yet to support its long-held claim that one of the finest artefacts ever
obtained by the Met was stolen from the Etruscan burial site of Cerveteri
near Rome .
The Los Angeles Times said Italian prosectors had obtained access to a
memoir written by Hecht who sold the Euphronios terracotta bowl or krater to
the Met in 1972 .
The document, seized during a 2001 raid on Hecht's Paris apartment, contains
a passage describing how Hecht bought the vase from Medici .
Italy also claims the Met has several vases from Apulia (present-day Puglia)
and a large collection of silverware stolen from the Ancient Greek colony at
Morgantina near Enna, Sicily. The collection includes a magnificent figure
of the monster Scylla .
As well as the Met and the Getty, two other US museums with huge antiquities
collections are believed to be under the lenses of Italian investigators:
Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the Cleveland Museum of Art .
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