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Fracas at 1000 Fifth
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is about to open its five-years-in the-making new galleries for Greek and Roman antiquities, centered around what it calls the “majestic” and “monumental” Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, formerly the museum’s restaurant. I’ve been researching a history of the Metropolitan, to be published by the Doubleday-Broadway division of Random House. What I heard this weekend can’t wait for the book.
The press will surely chronicle the bold-face attendees at the April 20th opening. But they should also pay attention to who doesn’t turn up, for that may signal whether the reign of longtime Met director Philippe de Montebello, 71, will end with well-deserved laurels or a controversy like those which followed his predecessor Thomas Hoving out the door thirty years ago.
Leon Levy, co-founder of the Oppenheimer mutual fund empire, is dead, but his wife Shelby White is very much alive, and is not only a member of the museum’s clubby board of trustees, but of its ruling executive committee, too. She’s also at the center of a long-running dispute that’s tortured the Met and museums everywhere for decades: the ceaseless demands by countries like Greece and Italy for the return of antiquities dug from their soil and smuggled over their borders since the trade was outlawed in the early ‘70s . These nations, and Turkey, Iran, Macedonia and others, see themselves as victims of a network of tomb robbers and shady art dealers who illegally dig up, export and sell their national patrimony to wealthy collectors. Collectors yearn to display their prizes in museums, giving them added value and an aura of legitimacy. The museums say they’re the best equipped to preserve them for posterity–and are unapologetic even when forced to return them.
Last year, the Metropolitan grudgingly agreed to give back to Italy two long-disputed treasures, the fabled Euphronios krater and the Morgantina silver, against the backdrop of an ongoing trial in Rome. Marion True, a curator of the rival Getty Museum, and Robert Hecht, the American dealer who sold the Euphronios krater and other antiquities to the Metropolitan, stand charged with conspiring to smuggle looted antiquities from Italy for the Getty’s collections. That affair, compellingly chronicled in Peter Watson’s recent book, The Medici Conspiracy
Since his big give-back, de Montebello has voiced scorn for the claims of the source countries. Yet Michel van Rijn, a former smuggler who saw the light and became a trusted advisor of law enforcement agencies, working with source countries, informing against looters and the museums and collectors who buy from them (and also running a crusading web site that exposes and ridicules–with gleeful profanity–looters, dealers and even museum eminences), says secret high-level talks are now going on between the Met and the cultural ministries of Italy and Greece. Those nations want what they claim are their antiquities returned. The museum, van Rijn continues, is eager to insure that high-ranking diplomats of both countries—ambassadors if possible—appear at, and so give tacit approval to, the Met’s new antiquities galleries and the collector-benefactors whose names are writ large over the door. Another deal may be in the making.
“The negotiations are frantic,” says van Rijn, who advises one of the concerned governments. Though White has offered the Greeks the return of nine objects, he continues, “Shelby has taken a firm stand. She wants to go down in history as a great philanthropist, not a looter. She’s pushing the Met in the throat like a goose in France, determined to make her point. She wants a ‘get out of jail free’ card that will make her pieces untouchable.”
The Met has already disgorged two of its highest-profile objects. Will wealthy Shelby—a former journalist who has refused to give me an interview–let her ancient treasures become more museum bargaining chips? The answer may not be apparent until after the last limo glides up to 1000 Fifth Avenue on April 20th.
[If you’d like to share stories—positive or negative–about the Metropolitan Museum of Art, its collections, or the people who created, sustained and now run it, please e-mail me at letters@mgross.com. All communications can be kept strictly confidential.]
March 4th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
[…] A source working with Italy’s carabinieri says I got it wrong in my post last week about antiquities collector Shelby White’s negotiations with the governments of Italy and Greece, two countries that claim her collection includes objects looted from their soil. “Shelby initiated the negotiations and that they are progressing,” says this source. “The opening [of the Metropolitan’s new antiquities galleries] will not be like the Getty Villa when [Getty curator Marion] True resigned and [antiquities collector, donor and Getty trustee] Barbara Fleischman left, too.” Let’s hope thatr’s true for New York City’s sake. True ended up on trial in Rome alongside Robert Hecht, the well-born dealer who sold the Metropolitan Museum the Euphronios krater, the famous ‘hot pot,’ as former Met director Thomas Hoving memorably called it, among other treasures. Speaking of Hoving, word is he’s now putting the final touches on his latest memoir, The Artful Tommy. If past performance is any indication, it will ruffle feathers all along Fifth Avenue, and prove as popular as King Tut. […]
March 5th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
[…] Don’t try and wipe that spot off Metropolitan Museum of Art director Philippe de Montebello’s lapel. It’s the Legion of Honor, which France has previously awarded to such American cultural icons as Marvin Traub of Bloomingdales, Oscar de la Renta and Pauline Trigere of Seventh Avenue and Colin Powell of Weapons of Mass Destruction. De Montebello got his yesterday. Hopefully, Italy and Greece, which have had their issues with “The Montebello” as the Washington Post calls him, were paying attention. […]
April 5th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
[…] I’ve posted on this before here and here (and as an aside, Mead’s article confirms my report that Metropolitan trustee Shelby White is negotiating with Italy for the return of disputed objects in her collection). I am not at all one of absolutists who feel that encyclopaedic museums should be emptied of their contents. But neither should they be enabled to roll over their opponents like tanks. […]
April 9th, 2007 at 10:10 pm
[…] More confirmation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s fervent desire to get the Good Antiquities-keeping Seal of Approval for its new Greek and Roman Galleries, opening later this month. A few weeks ago, Gripebox revealed the frantic negotiations to insure the attendance of diplomats from Greece, Italy and other so-called “source nations,” who would be tacitly giving their blessing to the objects that will be on display. Turns out, those efforts have been going on for years. In December, 2004, in response to a demand by the mayor of Monteleone di Spoleto for the return of the famous Etruscan Chariot, aka the Biga di Monteleone di Spoleto, which has been in the Museum for more than 100 years, its secretary and legal gunslinger Sharon Cott wrote to Tito Mazzetta, the lawyer representing the town, respectfully reclining its demand for the chariot’s return, expressing the Met’s hope “that representatives of the Italian government will be part of the celebration” and suggesting the mayor come along, too, to participate in an ancillary event promoting “the contributions of the Umbrian regoin to Etruscan art.” That velvety invitation was, however, delivered on the point of a stilleto. “Should your client be intent on pursuing what we respectfully submit is a futile legal claim to the Chariot or adopting some other adversarial posture, we could not engage in such a dialogue,” Cott concluded. The mayor will not be attending, but neither, Mazzetta tells me, is he abandoning the effort to recover the chariot. […]