Met Chief To Discuss ‘Hot Pot’ in Rome
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The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is headed to Rome for discussions with Italian officials about eight pieces from the museum’s collection – including the prized Euphronios krater – that the Italian government claims were looted.
Philippe de Montebello, the museum’s curator of 28 years, is slated to arrive in Rome within the next few days, an official in Italy’s Ministry of Cultural Heritage, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said yesterday. A spokesman for the Met, Harold Holzer, confirmed that “a meeting is being arranged,” but would not comment on when it would occur or what specifically would be discussed.
The planned meeting comes amid allegations by the Italian government – some, it says, based on photographic evidence – that more than 100 antiquities housed in museums across America, Europe, and Asia were stolen from the country by an antiques dealer convicted of trafficking in looted art. Authorities identified eight pieces in the Met with disputed provenance, including the Euphronios krater, a fifth-century B.C.E. vase considered to be the museum’s most prized antiquity.
Italian prosecutors have collected the evidence for a case against a former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Marion True, and Robert Hecht Jr., an American art dealer, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Ms. True and Mr. Hecht are charged with a conspiracy involving the trafficking of millions of dollars in looted antiquities, stemming from the Getty’s purchase of dozens of pieces whose validity the Italian government has disputed. Mr. Hecht is the dealer who sold the Euphronios krater to the Met.
The Getty case is expected to have a wide-ranging impact on the future trading of antiquities. The Italian Ministry of Culture said yesterday the Getty had “spontaneously” decided to return three objects to the country, one of which, another ancient Greek krater, was the subject of a formal complaint by the Italian government.
The decision by the Getty to return the objects was designed as a gesture of good will, the museum said. In a statement, the museum said it did so “in the interest of settling the litigation and demonstrating the Getty’s interest in a productive relationship with Italy.”
Mr. Holzer of the Met said the Italian government had contacted the museum about the Euphronios krater and other objects, but he would not say whether a formal complaint had been filed.
The origin of the Euphronios has long been questioned. The Met, led by its director at the time, Thomas Hoving, purchased the krater from Mr. Hecht in 1972 for a then-record sum of $1 million. Mr. Hecht told museum officials that he acquired the piece from a Lebanese dealer who had said it was in his family’s collection since World War I. The museum’s purchase of the Euphronios, and the account of its origin, were met with widespread suspicion, and spurred probes in Italy and America. In 1977, the Manhattan district attorney, Robert Morgenthau, launched his own inquiry and impaneled a grand jury. According to Mr. Hoving, Mr. Morgenthau disbanded the grand jury after a Chicago art collector gave last-minute testimony that appeared to substantiate the museum’s claim of provenance. Yet in the decades since the Met acquired the Euphronios, a second story of its origin has emerged, backed by a mounting pile of evidence. Court records divulged late last month by the Los Angeles Times show Italian investigators seized a handwritten memoir penned by Mr. Hecht from his Paris apartment in 2001. In the manuscript, Mr. Hecht details two versions of how he obtained the krater, including one account in which he writes that he purchased it in 1971 from Giacomo Medici, an Italian dealer convicted last year of selling stolen art. The court records, the Times reported, also include photographs of Messrs. Medici and Hecht posing with the vase.
Mr. Morgenthau’s office said it was unlikely to reopen the case, since it had received no new complaints.
For Mr. Hoving, the former Met director, the new evidence comes as vindication. Although he once vouched for the authenticity of the Euphronios krater, he has come to believe it was stolen, and labeled it a “hot pot.”
Mr. Hoving called the krater “one of the 10 greatest works created in the Western world” and said the new evidence tainting its acquisition would dramatically alter the antiquities trade. “Nobody’s going to buy anything without 100% proof of provenance,” he said.