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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