14
IF GIACOMO MEDICI WAS enemy number one in the eyes of Conforti and Ferri, and if Hecht was number two, it was debatable who was number three. There was no shortage of candidates: Becchina, Fritz Bürki, Symes. And then there was Marion True. Medici referred to Symes and Christo as his “diaspora,” meaning that as Hecht began to age, they were the main conduit in spreading his objects around the world. In reality, of course, they were all part of a much bigger diaspora—the spread of antiquities out of Italy and throughout the world—to the United States, to Britain, to Germany, to Japan, to Denmark: all of it illicit.
It was inevitable that Conforti’s and Ferri’s investigation should lead to the United States. No sooner had the Swiss decided not to proceed against Medici—and the documentary and photographic evidence, together with the 4,000 or so antiquities, had been transferred to Italian soil—that True’s lawyer proposed a meeting with Ferri. This interview was not as quickly accomplished as Hecht’s but still occurred a great deal earlier than some of the others. Ferri, Rizzo, Pellegrini, two of Conforti’s men, and an official—an archaeologist from the Italian Ministry of Culture—flew to Los Angeles in June 2001 to interview her. The Alitalia 747 landed at Los Angeles Airport on a baking hot day, the smog haze over the downtown skyscrapers visible from the aircraft’s final approach.
The Italian team was staying at a hotel in Santa Monica, a pretty town on the coast just south of where the new Getty is located. They had no chance to enjoy its amenities, however. After the long, twelve-hour flight they were all tired, and Ferri had ordered a meeting at eight the next morning, before they boarded their people-carrier for the rendezvous at the museum. The reason for Ferri’s strict regime was a response to the way those on the American side had conducted themselves. Eleven months earlier, the Italian public prosecutor had issued letters rogatory, asking for several documents, to interview True, Dietrich von Bothmer, and Ashton Hawkins. Ferri had been told that von Bothmer was “not available” unless the Italians decided to bring charges against True, and he never received any response at all to his request to interrogate Hawkins. In addition, the U.S. attorney involved, Daniel Goodman, had argued that Ferri’s original request to the Getty was “too vague, too wide” and that unless he could be more specific, the museum could offer no assistance.
Then, ten days later, a knock was heard on Ferri’s door at the Palazzo di Giustizia in Rome—and there stood Richard Martin, the Getty’s lawyer. He had with him a bunch of documents.
By handing over some of the paperwork voluntarily, the Getty was not compelled to provide all of the pertinent documents, and it faced no penalty for what looked like cooperation. The Getty knew that letters rogatory are cumbersome instruments and Ferri would have little choice but to accept what was offered. The Getty also knew that its voluntary gesture would avoid the formal process of discovery, which would have compelled it to reveal all.
And so, that morning in Santa Monica, Ferri wanted one last meeting to make sure his people were all on their toes ahead of a crucial encounter. They would get only one bite from this particular apple. It was June 20.
The meeting began at 9:30 AM in the conference room of the museum, which rests on the top of a hill overlooking the Sepulveda Pass and Highway 405, the San Diego Freeway. The meeting room is large, with windows along one side and a long, oval-shaped, blond-wood table. The Italians sat down one side, the Getty people down the other, with Ferri directly opposite Marion True. On the American team, besides True herself, there were ranged: Daniel Goodman, the U.S. attorney, representing the U.S. Department of Justice; Deborah Gribbon, then director of the Getty, representing the museum; Richard Martin, the Getty’s lawyer; Lodovico Isolabella, True’s elegant Italian lawyer; and interpreters and official stenographers, there to record proceedings.
True is a handsome woman who, over the years, has been both brunette and blond. She spent her early career at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, in the Greek and Roman Department. She transferred to the Getty Museum in 1983 and became curator two years later.
The interrogation lasted for two whole days, and at first, the meeting was tense. True was being interviewed on serious charges in front of her colleagues and superiors; there was bound to be a fraught atmosphere.
Ferri’s aim was to relax True, and to get her talking—at least to begin with—about others. If she would incriminate others, he could use that against them, perhaps to get back at True. It was a classic fencing match, but carried out via the unwieldy form of translation. Ferri had mixed feelings: He was angry at what True had done, but he was also fascinated by a woman who was undoubtedly strong, was well versed in her subject, and had, he felt, been led astray.
During the course of her questioning, True said she had first met Giacomo Medici in 1984 in Basel, Switzerland, at the sale of the Bolla Collection of Greek amphorae. (The Bolla family lived in Lugano.) They had been introduced by Robert Hecht and Dietrich von Bothmer. Later, she said, she saw Medici in Geneva, Rome, and Malibu, California. In Geneva in 1988, she saw him together with Robert Hecht, at the Freeport. On that occasion, she was offered a bronze Etruscan tripod and a candelabrum, and at the same time Medici showed her some photographs of a collection of red-figure Attic plates attributed to the Bryn Mawr Painter. They were intact and not in fragments, she remembered, though one plate had an edge missing. She met Medici again one or two years later in a bank in Geneva where he showed her, among other things, a late-Hellenistic sculpture of the Goddess Tyche, already cleaned. (This was the statue eventually sold by Symes to the Fleischmans, who then sold it on to the Getty.) Later still, Medici came to see her in Malibu, when again he was with Hecht. It was a courtesy visit and Medici had his son with him. True, crucially, contradicted Symes, insisting that she did not consider Medici an expert.
True said she knew that certain things purchased by her predecessor, Jiri Frel, had been acquired from the Hydra Gallery, and she knew that both that gallery and Editions Services were owned by Medici. Through Frel she had also met Gianfranco Becchina, in his case at the Getty in 1983—1984, “when there was beginning to be talk of the statue that was to become known as the Getty Kouros.” She confirmed that, so far as she knew, Becchina and Medici hated each other. Becchina, she said, had at that time already sold the Getty a dinos krater and some fragments of frescoes.
She had known Robert Hecht since 1972 or 1973 when she worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. “He was a good friend of the curator of the museum, Cornelius Vermeule and his wife, Emily.” (Emily Vermeule had been Marion True’s professor.) True confirmed that Hecht was in partnership with Bruce McNall in the Summa Gallery but that he had also been in partnership with Fritz Bürki in Zurich and kept various objects in Bürki’s shop. This contradicted Bürki’s testimony.
She was, she said, good friends with Dietrich von Bothmer at the Metropolitan. He too had been her professor. True’s nerves seemed to intensify when the subject of von Bothmer was raised, and she asked for a break. Daniela Rizzo noticed that the heel on one of True’s sandals was broken and, after the break, she had changed her shoes.
The interrogation proceeded, and Ferri returned to the matter of Dietrich von Bothmer.
FERRI: Did he ever confide—Did he ever confide in you? I’m insisting on this particular point.
TRUE: Yes, I think it’s fair to say he did.
FERRI: When?
TRUE: In terms of important confidences, sort of at the end of his position when he was retiring around, say, must have been 1990, that time.
FERRI: He confided in you in a major way, and I have the same information, I have information about a major—that he confided with you in a major way. Can you tell me what that is?
TRUE: Just to put it in perspective, Mr.—Professor von Bothmer wanted me to be his successor at the Met. And at one point I was in his office, and he had a photograph, an aerial photograph, which showed the necropolis of Cerveteri. And looking at the necropolis, he pointed to a certain spot on the photograph and said this is the place where the Euphronios krater was found.
FERRI: Did he show particular tombs?
TRUE: Yes.
FERRI: Where was that tomb, was it Sant’Angelo?
TRUE: I don’t know. I honestly—It was just this photograph and I—
FERRI: Did he tell you why he was able to point out that tomb?
TRUE: No. Just said he’d been given the information that that was where the krater had come from.
This was sensational testimony, of course, and Ferri would dearly have loved to take a break there and then, to savor what Marion True had admitted. But, for the moment, he kept going. He then read the relevant extract from Hecht’s memoir, the “Medici version” that related how Medici had turned up one day at Hecht’s Rome house with photographs, how they had flown to Milan and taken a train to Lugano, and so forth. But Marion True said she knew nothing of this. She was aware of the Dikran Sarrafian version she said, and that was all.
She described Hecht as a very intelligent and fascinating man, but an “incurable gambler” and a “chronic alcoholic.” She confirmed that Robin Symes had confided to her Hecht’s threats to libel his rivals in a book after his death.
She agreed that Hecht specialized in selling fragments of vases that had already been bought by museums. Hecht was still active, she thought. She had bumped into him in Athens about two years before, when they were staying in the same hotel, and he was trying to sell something to the Benaki Museum (a museum of Greek culture, from antiquity to the present day, part of which is in the Kerameikos district). She confirmed that although he could be charming, he “could also turn, be very hostile, very sarcastic, very sinister. He was a person who had a very peculiar personality.”
FERRI: Do you know if Hecht—Did Hecht ever threaten to slander against anybody if you didn’t go along with what he wanted or you rebelled against what he wanted to do?
TRUE: I have heard threats of that kind reported.
FERRI: Who told you this?
TRUE: I think it was Robin Symes.
Later:
FERRI: . . . What were the threats that Symes referred to from Hecht?
TRUE: Just—I just remember something, and I can’t tell you specifically what it was, but it was a suggestion that Robin made—I mean that he—Just trying to reconstruct what happened. It may have been at the anniversary party that Robin had in London. And it was like a—I think the 25th anniversary of his gallery and he had a big party. And I wasn’t there, but he told me that Bob got very drunk and made some statements like, you know, I can destroy you all, or—Something very unpleasant but not specific.
She confirmed—and this was important—that when objects were offered to the museum, Polaroid photographs were never sent by the vendor, since they lacked the precision to show the real quality of the object on offer. This did not fit with the claim by Robin Symes that Polaroids were used, routinely, to show prospective clients the original state of an object.
She also confirmed that she knew all the key figures in the cordata. She said she had met Bürki many times in Zurich (Fritz Bürki, remember, could not recall having many dealings with the Getty.) Then came this exchange:
FERRI: Fritz Bürki is a restorer of art objects. Did he—Has he sold any objects directly to the J. Paul Getty?
TRUE: I think he is represented as the owner of objects that we bought. And this was a situation, as I told you, I knew that he worked together with Bob. And either one or the other of them owned the object. And sometimes an object would come under Bürki’s name.
FERRI: I see. So they would exchange—One was an intermediary for the other?
TRUE: Yes. I mean one had the feeling with Bob Hecht that he—he worked with various people, depending on people who were really able to provide funds.
She said she could not really explain why she had written the letter she did, on June 10, 1987, to Medici, telling him that the two objects would be bought by the museum, since according to her, she knew that the bronzes belonged to Bürki and then Hecht.
FERRI: So you knew that the owner was Medici?
TRUE: Medici was the person who had showed them to me. As I told you, whether the objects were owned by Bürki or Medici, I couldn’t tell you.
FERRI: Why did you accept documentation coming from Bürki?
TRUE: Because, as I told you, Bürki frequently worked together with Bob and Bob worked together with Giacomo.
The museum bought several objects directly from Medici, she said, including fragments of the Onesimos kylix and the Caeretan Hydria, “so there was no reason why Medici’s name should not appear in the museum’s documents.” Challenged with the fact that, despite this statement, Medici’s name does not appear in Getty documents, she answered that some objects were in the name of the Hydra Gallery, though she admitted that the words “Editions Services” do not appear in the Getty archives. Asked about the letter she wrote to Bürki, concerning the ongoing investigation, in which she said she had seen the tripod in Geneva at Medici’s, and not in Zurich at Bürki’s, she answered that her memory was faulty and that she had only remembered the true course of events when prompted by Hecht. When the museum returned the tripod, it did so on the basis that it would not be returned to Guglielmi because he “had probably smuggled it out only to then report the theft once it had been discovered.” She admitted sending verbal guarantees to Medici concerning the arrival of the tripod even though he didn’t appear to be the owner. She said that the confidential, intimate tone of her letters to Medici was due to the fact that she and the museum needed him because of the case of the kouros, the fake they had bought from Becchina, after Medici sent proof of its falsity. In addition, letters exchanged with Medici concerning three olpai were indicated by Medici as coming from Monte Abatone in Cerveteri. Medici had told her whence the objects came. She said, “Evidently he was in relation with whoever had excavated them.”
True said she was present at an argument between Robin Symes and Robert Guy, in which the latter, while examining objects of Symes’s collection, had pretended not to have ever seen them before, whereas she knew that he had seen them at Medici’s and kept this fact secret. “It was therefore obvious that Symes’ objects came from Medici.”
Regarding the Onesimos kylix, the initial purchase was made by Jiri Frel from the Galerie Nefer (Frida Tchacos’s gallery). Then the fragments of the central tondo were bought by Arthur Houghton (the museum did not ascertain its provenance, but True agreed that the fragments came from the Hydra Gallery), and one fragment was donated in 1986 or 1987 by von Bothmer—it was a fragment that Dyfri Williams had recognized among those of von Bothmer’s collection. The fragment had a sticker on it, which read “RH’68,” which she understood to mean “Robert Hecht 1968.” She recognized among the photos seized from Medici—including a Polaroid—the fragments of the tondo of the kylix, and she confirmed that, in 1991, Williams published this object, reporting that he had seen a fragment of the border that, she confirmed, was in Medici’s possession. She had received from Christo Michaelides a photocopy of a photograph that showed the fragment. Michaelides said that the piece was on the market (more triangulation), but she was never offered it. (It was this fragment, indicated by Dyfri Williams, that had been handed over by Medici when he knew that the game was up.)
True said that she knew at least some of the Levy-White collection came from Tchacos, Hecht, Symes, the Aboutaams, and Becchina because several objects had first been offered to her by these people. She admitted that the Hunt Collection was gathered through Hecht, McNall, and the Summa Gallery—and she confirmed moreover that when she first went to the Getty, Jiri Frel had told her about “the sodality between Hecht, Bürki and the Hunts.”
She described Ortiz as “an exceptionally unpleasant human being. He—he lives outside of Geneva, has his collection in a vault underground. I think his closest connection is with Becchina and with—He was close with Nikolas Koutoulakis. He seemed to have a love-hate relationship with Robin Symes, who threw him down the stairs once.”
Regarding the Attic plates, she said that when the museum decided not to buy them, Medici refused to sell the accompanying fragments, which had been offered for about $125,000.
Shown the photographs of the Pompeian frescoes, she confirmed that she had seen the real things in Zurich—where she remembered there were three walls (which means that at least one is still missing). In her opinion they would be impossible to sell, and in fact she said she was so worried by the offer that she had someone accompany her—professor Michael Strocka, an expert in frescoes from Freiberg University—as a witness. She added that there was “part of the cornice” that reminded her of a fragment in the Levy-White Collection and that there was a fragment in the Fleischman Collection that “could be part of the same” and, if so, perhaps it should be returned. She said she was shocked by the frescoes: “It is impossible to remove architectural objects like these without destroying the structure.”
This was an important moment. During the lunch break on the second day, Maurizio Pellegrini had been shown around the museum by True herself. He found her much more sympathetic than he had expected and far more so than anyone else on the opposing team. They stopped in front of the Griffins and Pellegrini looked from the beautifully displayed loot toward True. “I felt that, in that moment, True was ‘dispiaciuta’” (sorry). Not so much sorry for being guilty, which he felt she was, but because she was an archaeologist and was betraying her profession.
Ferri was tougher. His heart had begun to harden against True when he had heard what Tchacos had to say about the Fleischmans and the way the Getty curator had used—and abused, as he saw it—her relationship with them. As True talked about being “shocked” by the frescoes she had seen in the Bürkis’ workshop, he also recalled the fact that it was written in the catalog to the Fleischman Collection that their fresco, the lunette of Hercules, “came from the same room” as one in the Levy-White Collection and, as Ferri now knew, had its twin in Corridor 17. He felt that Marion True was appealing for sympathy here when she didn’t deserve it. It is fair to say that, from that moment, Ferri was determined to bring True to trial.
After lunch, proceeding to other matters, Ferri next tackled an example of the trade in fragments, or orphans. The kantharos with masks was first offered—to Jiri Frel—by Symes. To begin with, it was turned down, then sold to the museum in fragments, first by Fritz and Harry Bürki, “who said they had got it from Symes, partially put together.” Other fragments came in 1988, from Symes, then another eleven fragments in 1996, from Brian Aitken, a North American benefactor of the arts.
And in regard to the Douris Phiale, described by True as an “exceptional object,” she said that it was acquired in fragments “from various provenances”—Tchacos, Symes, Bürki, Werner Nussberger (the husband of Tchacos). She tried hard to get all the fragments, negotiating “with everyone—Hecht, Tchacos, [Herbert] Cahn.”
More generally, True agreed that in acquiring fragments, most of the edges were sharp, meaning that they had been broken recently. “I would say in most cases they were sharp joins that were close. They allowed for a tight join.” She said there was at times “weathering” on the surface. “But they were not worn.”
She also confirmed that a certain vase that was in the Getty was shown in Medici’s Polaroids. This was important because the Polaroid showed the vase with a hole punctured in it. Daniela Rizzo explained that the hole had been made by a spillo, a long metal spike used by tombaroli to thrust in the ground, searching for buried tombs. From time to time, the spike punctures the vases of a very full tomb—so this type of hole betrays that the vase has been illegally excavated. True responded, “I know. I understand.”
Finally, Dr. True was able to render Dr. Ferri a service. He showed her a sequence of photographs, including Polaroids, and she was able to confirm not only which objects were in the Getty’s collection but, in some cases, in which other museums certain objects could be found. True confirmed nineteen objects that were in the Getty, though two others—fragments of vases by the Kleophrades Painter and the Berlin Painter—could have formed part of incomplete objects they already had. She pointed out one or two fakes, as she saw them, but she located a Laconian kylix and two more objects at the Metropolitan Museum in New York; another object in Toledo, Ohio; a lekythos “in Cleveland or Richmond Museum”; a situla (a bronze vase with handles, like a bucket), “perhaps in Richmond”; a vase at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; and a Sabene statue, also in Boston, acquired through Hecht. Other objects she identified as being in Minneapolis, at least one object that she knew was in the Levy-White Collection, and a third at the Japanese museum in Koreshiki Ninigawa.
From the cumbersome bilingual interviews, nothing had been unearthed during the two days with True that seemed to contradict Ferri’s case. On the contrary, much had been confirmed and amplified. Medici’s role, together with Becchina, as being the major source of illicit objects out of Italy, had been reinforced. The triangulations—involving Hecht, Symes, Bürki, and Tchacos—had also been underlined. And of course, most notable were the close links between True herself and von Bothmer on the one hand, with the underworld on the other. As curator of antiquities at a major museum, True—like von Bothmer—had shown herself perfectly prepared to be part of this clandestine network, and well aware of where the objects her museum acquired had originated. She confessed herself “scandalized” at the damage that must have been done in excavating the Pompeian frescoes, but apart from that she seems to have had little compunction or regret about her part in driving other acquisitions. Certainly, during the course of her interview, she expressed no remorse. All this only confirmed for Ferri that he would, eventually, bring charges against the Getty’s curator.
Ferri’s primary “target” was, of course, Medici. At the same time, he couldn’t ignore the fact that he now had two important pieces of evidence that changed utterly the status of the Euphronios krater at the Metropolitan Museum. He had Hecht’s memoir, which said that it had been Medici—and not Dikran Sarrafian—from whom von Bothmer had acquired this object. And he now had Marion True’s testimony that von Bothmer, no less, had identified the very tomb in Cerveteri from which the krater had come. (Third, of course, though this wasn’t conclusive, he had another Euphronios vase, taken from Medici’s safe in Corridor 17 in Geneva, now safely under lock and key at the Villa Giulia in Rome. Moreover, with linked iconography—this is the kylix in the photograph that Hoving saw.)v
And so Ferri now set out to see von Bothmer. In fact, in this part of the investigation he teamed up with a colleague, Dr. Frank di Maio, a Sicilian public prosecutor investigating the Morgantina silver.w Obviously, the Italians thought they would strike a more reasonable and responsible bearing if they made these two inquiries at the same time. Also, the two inquiries fed on each other, together putting pressure on the Americans to cooperate. Therefore, in the first week of August 2002, the Italians sent off an “Urgent Request for Judicial Assistance,” addressed to “The Competent Judicial Authority of New York, USA.” This followed up rogatory letters of June 2000 (immediately after the documents and antiquities had been transferred from Switzerland)—the Italians could not be accused of dithering.
The objects of their inquiry were accused of contravening, in the case brought by Ferri, four articles of the Italian penal code—neglecting to report archaeological discoveries, illegal export, receiving contraband, and conspiracy. In the case brought by Dr. di Maio’s investigation of the Morgantina silver, there were three indictments—neglecting to report archaeological discoveries, illegal export, and the receiving of contraband.
The documents the public prosecutors sent to the Americans outlined succinctly why the Italians were so anxious to interview two U.S. citizens—both former employees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, former curator von Bothmer and Ashton Hawkins, formerly vice president of the museum and in-house counsel.
The document began by setting out clearly what had been discovered at Medici’s warehouse in Geneva and identified the seven objects at the Met that, the Italians said, had come from him, including the Euphronios krater. The Italians pointed out that Hecht’s memoir, seized in Paris, gave an account of how the krater had left Italy, that Marion True had testified that von Bothmer had pointed out on an aerial photograph the tomb in Cerveteri where the krater came from, and that when Hecht was asked during his interrogation which of the versions of the Euphronios krater was correct, he requested a break in the questioning so that he could consult his lawyer, “thus giving us to understand, with good reason, that the official reconstruction of the affair of this important archaeological find, was nothing else but a story told to hinder penal and civil actions in Italy.” The document also referred to the kylix by Euphronios that ended up with the Hunts.
The Italians believed that von Bothmer could help them sort out the exact acquisitions trail not only of the seven objects in the Met but also of many objects in the Getty and in the Levy-White Collection, for which he had, after all, compiled the catalog.
They were also concerned with two other matters. Ferri and Pellegrini had, over the months, examined the Getty Museum Journal and noted that von Bothmer had been very active in donating fragments to the museum, in particular as follows:
• in 1984, one fragment of an Euaion kylix;
• in 1986, forty-seven (unspecified) fragments out of 810, by different artists, purchased by the J. P. Getty Museum;
• in 1987, four fragments of a Douris kylix and, on a separate occasion, one fragment of a Douris kylix;
• in 1987, eleven (unspecified) fragments out of 189, by different artists, purchased by the J. P. Getty Museum;
• in 1988, thirteen fragments of an Astragal by the Syriskos Painter;
• in 1989, one fragment of a goblet krater by the Berlin Painter;
• in 1993, eight fragments of a Skyphos by the Kleophrades Painter;
• in 1993, one fragment of a kylix by the Brygos Painter;
• in the years 1981–1982–1987–1988—a total of thirty-two fragments of a Douris kylix.
That made 119 fragments in all. How had von Bothmer come by these orphans, as fragments are known in the trade? What was going on?
Ferri was also interested in von Bothmer’s attitude. When, in 1985, he had been sent Sotheby’s catalog for its July antiquities sale, he had spotted that Lot 540, an Attic black-figured amphora, had been identified in an Italian magazine as having been illegally excavated by a tombarolo from Tarquinia. His reaction had been to alert Felicity Nicholson at Sotheby’s, and not the Italian authorities.
This pattern of behavior was not dissimilar to that encountered by General Conforti of the Carabinieri, whose letter to the Met (and to Munich) about illicit objects had found its way to Robert Hecht’s apartment in Paris. In Ferri’s view the episode needed following up.
At the same time, Frank di Maio was on the trail of the fifteen pieces of Morgantina silver. In the mid-1980s, when doubts had first arisen about the provenance of the silver, which was announced in the museum’s summer bulletin of 1984, the Metropolitan had given contradictory accounts of how the treasure had reached Fifth Avenue. It had first said that the silver was acquired on two separate occasions, in 1981 and 1982, purchased from a certain Nabil el Asfar, a dealer in antiquities from Beirut. According to this account, Asfar had acquired the silver pieces from his father sometime after World War II and in 1961 they had been sent to Switzerland, where they had remained until the Metropolitan Museum decided to buy them. However, the museum had not actually bought them until the silver pieces were in the United States.x
The invoices actually produced by the Met itself didn’t match the museum’s own account or the import documentation provided by U.S. Customs. We have been here before, of course, more than once. This scenario is more than a little reminiscent of the Euphronios krater affair and the fuss over the Sevso silver, when the export licenses, purportedly from Lebanon, turned out to be forgeries. Once again, Lebanon is the putative country of origin; once again, a father has left his son some valuable antiquities; once again, though very beautiful and rare, they have been stored for years without anyone knowing about them; once again, they have been brought to the United States, from Switzerland, by Robert Hecht.
In December 2000, di Maio questioned Vincenzo Cammarata, a well-known Sicilian “collector” of archaeological artifacts, and a coin collector, too, well known in the international traffic of these artifacts.y During questioning, Cammarata said: “. . . regarding the silvers, I heard they had been discovered, or rather found, as a result of a fortuitous archaeological finding at Scillato [a small town of 750 inhabitants, in the remoter part of Palermo province, known for its oranges]. In particular, I know all this because of some persons who asked me how much the pieces were worth. I understood the pieces to have come from Morgantina.” Cammarata also showed di Maio some newspaper cuttings he had that referred to the silver pieces, and he said another man, Vincenzo Arcuri, had also seen them. Arcuri was interviewed the following month, on January 4, 2001, when he said: “. . . in the first years of the eighties, two persons that I did not know came to look for me in this centre, in Piazza Garibaldi, where they made me look at some silver archaeological items and they asked me how much they could make. . . .”
Arcuri recalled that the people said they were from the Palermo area and they showed him four objects, “among which I remember a round pyxis 7—8 centimeters [2—3 inches] high, with a partially gilded lid, representing ‘Scilla,’ placed frontally, two silver glasses twelve centimeters [4—5 inches] high, however higher than the pyxis, and a small silver bowl. On that occasion, these objects were particularly dirty and partially covered with mud. . . . Upon my request for knowing the provenance of this material, I was told they all came from the area between Caltavuturo and Scillato.” Shown sixteen good-quality unmarked photographs of Hellenistic silver, four pieces of which were from the Met and twelve of which were not, Arcuri immediately identified the Met silver pieces as the ones he had been asked about.
The American authorities had not been especially helpful to Ferri, or to di Maio. Yes, True had been interviewed, but permission to raid Hecht’s New York apartment had been denied, permission to interview von Bothmer had been declined, for the moment anyway, and no reply was ever forthcoming about Ashton Hawkins. Investigations are difficult under such circumstances, to say the least.
But the Italians plugged away and eventually Judge Muntoni managed to obtain further interviews, though not until almost another three years had elapsed. In September 2004, he was able to interview Barbara Fleischman, John Walsh, and Karol Wight.
The questioning of Barbara Fleischman took place on September 20, 2004, at One St. Andrew’s Plaza, in New York City. Thirteen people were present. Besides Judge Guglielmo Muntoni, Ferri, Rizzo, and this time just one of Conforti’s men, there were: Richard Martin for the Getty; Lodovico Isolabella for Marion True; a representative of the U.S. Department of Justice; and two attorneys on behalf of Barbara Fleischman. Hecht had been invited to send a legal representative, but he declined.
The main thing that came out of the encounter was that Barbara Fleischman confirmed that she and her husband bought most of their objects either through Hecht-Bürki or Symes or Tchacos. She understood Hecht and Bürki to be partners and, though she and her husband bought a few things from the Aboutaams, she understood them to be mainly an outfit that sold on other people’s behalf.
She said that the Fleischman collection was exhibited at—and then offered to—the Getty because their early good relationship with the Metropolitan Museum in New York had been damaged when the Met told them that they would have to pay for an exhibition at the Fifth Avenue museum that had been planned for several months and they would have to donate twelve objects to the Met. This had made Lawrence Fleischman very angry, so he had withdrawn his offer and all cooperation. Barbara Fleischman denied absolutely that she and her husband ever acquired anything as a way for the Getty to acquire it later. No one ever influenced them, she said, or was able to influence them.
She then told a story about Robert Hecht that, she said, showed his character. At one point her husband (who died in January 1997) was ill in the hospital and was visited by Hecht. She thought that was a civilized gesture—until Hecht took from his pocket a small bronze to see whether Fleischman wanted to buy it.
She said she never met Medici but always suspected he was a big figure in the background. She was at a loss to explain how two checks had found their way to Medici’s warehouse but speculated that the Aboutaams were “factoring” them—again, that they were acting as agents. She conceded that when the Fleischman Collection was transferred to the Getty all the financial information was left behind, but that was just an accident, she said. All the paperwork about provenance was included with the objects. She and her late husband only bought works of art in the United States or in London, never Switzerland or anywhere else.
John Walsh, director of the Getty between 1983 and 2000, was interviewed in the same place on the following day. He came out strongly in support of Marion True, arguing that when she and he had arrived at the museum, the Getty’s policy on the acquisition of unprovenanced material was “rather loose” and that she began to tighten things up. He said that they began to sound out governments from what he called the “archaeological countries” about which objects might have come from there; they speeded up publication, so that scholars could form a view about their acquisitions sooner rather than later; and they expressed a greater willingness to return objects that had been looted, “regardless of the statutes of limitations.”
Marion True, he said, was the main force in all this, but although they notified governments of potential problems, the response was disappointing—in fact, they got very little response from the archaeological countries. There were no lawsuits and no formal claims, he said. Later still, in the mid-1990s, they tightened up even more, trying to collaborate still more closely with the archaeological countries. Walsh said that this made True, and the Getty, very unpopular with other American museums. He said that True’s new polices were considered “too generous” in the eyes of the Metropolitan Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fort Worth Museum—he said that the richer museums didn’t like True’s policy at all. In his eagerness to support True, and his own Getty, of course, he perhaps didn’t realize what he was saying about American museums in general.
Walsh said he knew Symes, Hecht, Becchina, and a few of the other antiquities dealers, but in most cases he had met them just once and the relationship was confined to a handshake. He had heard of Bürki but had never met him, and the same went for Medici—he had heard the name but never met him, not even on the trip with Marion True to Rome when she had sent Medici a letter arranging a meeting. He said he had no idea how important Medici was.
Walsh said he had introduced the Fleischmans to True, in 1991. He had known them for years, since he was himself at the Met. This was well after the late 1980s, when Tchacos had said True was acquiring for the museum through Fleischman.
The following day—again at the same place—it was the turn of Karol Wight, Marion True’s assistant curator at the Getty. Wight had actually been at the Getty since 1985, at first in a part-time capacity, and had been an associate curator since 1997. She was a confused witness, who seemed not to understand many questions, and the U.S. attorney overrode Judge Muntoni and allowed her to confer with her attorneys during the questioning, which was unusual.
On one matter, however, Wight’s behavior was just bizarre. She was being questioned about the Fleischmans’ decision to sell their collection to the museum and Marion True’s role in that. She had said that True had no part in persuading the Fleischmans to choose the Getty, so Judge Muntoni asked her what it was that convinced them to dispose of their collection and sell it to the Los Angeles Museum, to which Karol Wight replied: “Is this the time for the story?”
Quite who this question was addressed to was unclear, but she quickly went on to describe an episode when Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman and Dr. True were walking through the museum, while their collection was still on display, and they came across a group of schoolchildren who had prepared reports on various of the objects. They had stopped to listen and became charmed by what the children had to say. After the children had finished their presentations, the Fleischmans introduced themselves and allowed the children to ask them questions. It was after this encounter, Wight said, that they had decided to sell their collection to a public institution and to the Getty museum. This was interesting of course because, only two days before, Barbara Fleischman herself had made no mention of such a motive for selling or donating their collection to the museum. In fact, she had said that she and her husband had opted for the Getty only after they fell out with the Metropolitan. She had made no mention of any schoolchildren.
Karol Wight said one other thing that drew Ferri’s attention. Asked directly if there existed a “privileged” file of information in the museum regarding the provenance of antiquities, she replied that she knew of nothing like that. In his account, John Walsh had said that the Getty had tightened up considerably under Marion True and no longer took a dealer’s word for it, that objects someone was offering to the museum were legitimate. One would have thought that if the museum had indeed done its own research into the provenance of the objects it was thinking of acquiring, then there would have been a record somewhere of the results of those inquiries.
In some of the U.S. sessions, there were as many as fifteen people in the room at any one time. This is a far cry from the image we all have of police interrogations taking place in small confined spaces, where one or two law enforcement officers spar with suspects on a one-to-one or two-to-one basis, where the exchanges can be rapid and tension-filled. In addition to the sheer size of the meetings—almost a crowd scene—there was the language barrier. This was to be expected. However, Pellegrini sensed something else, something he hadn’t anticipated but maybe should have. “There was an element of competitive nationalism in the encounters,” he said. Instead of being law enforcement versus suspects, it had become—to an extent—Italy versus the United States.