Charles Cronin

In May 2019 Italy’s ministry of culture alleged that four works owned by the J. Paul Getty Museum had been stolen and illegally exported from Italy. None of the four works is exceptional, and, as the Italian prosecutor himself implied, these fresh allegations of malfeasance involving the Getty are a pretextual gambit by which the ministry hopes to lure the Getty into negotiations over a much higher profile cultural and political prize: Victorious Youth, a 2,300-year-old Greek bronze that is a highlight of the Getty’s collection.

In 2014, the Los Angeles radio station KPCC discussed Italy’s decades-long prosecution of their claim for the bronze with Kelly Crow, an art market reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Demonstrating the apologetic mien that permeates American discourse on such issues of repatriation, Crow stated that the Getty had acquired a “shady reputation” as the world’s richest museum, operating under an acquisition policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” She went on to say that the Getty had also, “to its credit, overhauled its policies and tried to be a ‘good soldier’ in returning things that don’t belong to them.” “Shady reputation”? Compared to whom? The Louvre? The British Museum? The Pergamon? The Hermitage? The so-called Treasure Houses of Britain? All contain works from foreign nations acquired as spoils of war, grand tour “collecting,” excavation junkets, and similar legally and ethically equivocal means. These institutions have dodged an onslaught of claims like those now confronting American museums, taking cover behind a convenient fig leaf: the UNESCO Convention’s restrictions on the traffic of cultural property only went into effect in 1970, before which year their arguably questionable acquisitions had occurred. Meanwhile, in the 1970s Americans like J. Paul Getty and Norton Simon were purchasing, on the open market, works that few others could afford.

In 1968, shortly after Victorious Youth was discovered in international waters, Italy’s highest court determined that the statue did not belong to Italy. The Italian government only claimed ownership of the work after Getty purchased and publicly displayed it in the late 1970s. In November 2018, fifty years after its 1968 decision, the same Italian court reversed its decision and determined the bronze was Italian property after all.

While the latter decision is by itself toothless, as Italy has no jurisdiction over an American enterprise, the Getty is likely wary that the United States government might enforce it at the behest of the Italian ministry. For some years now the U.S. government—through the State, Justice, and Homeland Security Departments particularly—has betrayed the museums of its own citizenry by strong-arming them into acceding to foreign nations’ demands for now-prized objects once located within their territories.

No other government has compiled anything close to the United States’ record of accommodation of such patrimonial claims, which has made American museums and collectors attractive targets for these schemes. By assisting, and thereby encouraging, foreign nations’ prosecution of repatriation claims regarding cultural property, the United States flatters these typically economically frail countries, and thereby cultivates political capital within them. But by doing so the United States also risks appearing as both a culturally indifferent patsy, and a heedless benefactor manifesting noblesse oblige.

Repatriation claims like those targeting the Getty appear to be motivated, at least partly, by tacit resentment and embarrassment on the part of the governments of Italy and other claimant nations. Italy is not known for its development and production of high-tech trophies like jetliners, supercomputers, or satellites. It is, however, celebrated for other marketable products, like haute couture and untold antiquities. Given the habitually parlous state of Italy’s economy, the excavation, preservation, and study of these artifacts are not national priorities. Such activities have become the province of affluent foreign institutions, including American universities and establishments like the Getty and the Packard Humanities Institute, whose gifts support Italian historians and archeologists.

Italian institutions and individuals’ eager acceptance of money from foreigners—whether from institutions like the Getty or, in transactions involving tombaroli (“tomb robbers”), the typically less-pristine hands of art dealers—embarrasses the Italian government. To avoid appearing like an aged relative dependent on the discretionary largesse of a well-heeled patriarch, Italian cultural officials are known to bite the hands that feed them. By doing so they hope to project a semblance of self-sufficiency and vigilance, despite a widespread, though tacit, understanding that Italy has neither sufficient means nor will to seek, preserve, or cherish artifacts from the ancient world located within its borders.

While a graduate student I briefly studied in Italy, and I once asked my Italian roommates—molte amichevole architecture students at the University of Florence—to name their favorite operas of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, and Verdi. They had heard of only Verdi, but they couldn’t name any of his works. In response to my surprise, they agreed among themselves: “ne abbiamo troppo”—“we’ve too much [of old cultural stuff].” (They were, however, more familiar than I with popular American music and movies.)

Let us return to Italy’s claim to Victorious Youth. This is a Greek work, discovered in international waters; the Italian prosecutor must be aware of the scant legal or ethical grounds for his claim. It is simply a ruse to capitalize upon a regrettable record of capitulation on the part of the Getty, during a period of unseasoned leadership there earlier this century, to demands for uncompensated return to Italy and Greece of objects the museum acquired on the open market.

Given the remarkably attenuated claim of the prosecutor, the U.S. Department of Justice might not insert itself into this dispute. But what if it did? The bronze would then be sent to Italy, where it would likely be displayed in sub-optimal conditions in a provincial Adriatic city. There, after an initial burst of visitors and orchestrated public chest thumping, it would soon be all but forgotten. Its fate would be like that of the Getty’s Aphrodite that, under duress, the museum transferred to Sicily some years ago. After years of delighting hundreds of thousands of admirers in sumptuous glory in Los Angeles, the work now languishes in obscurity in the remote town of Aidone.

Even under Italian cultural property law, Italy never owned Victorious Youth, which was not found on Italian territory. Under Italian law, however, the government claims ownership of innumerable Greek, Roman, and Etrurian artifacts, excavated or otherwise, located within Italy’s borders.  Rather than using its surplus of antiquities as a prop for political grandstanding, Italy could capitalize on these assets by selling or trading them for materials and services its citizens need or want. For its Aphrodite the Getty paid $18 million (close to $35 million today) not a penny of which it recovered. If the Italian government had obtained that sum – rather than a disreputable dealer in London – it could have purchased an excellent replica of the statue, plus a Ford Fiesta apiece for over half the residents of Aidone. I am confident the Aidonese would have preferred such an outcome.

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