The Getty Museum Repatriation Cases
How the world's richest museum was forced to give its treasures back
Image: Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, the wealthiest art institution in the world, was forced to return around 40 looted antiquities to Italy and Greece after investigators traced them to illicit excavations — and to put its own curator on trial.
For decades the J. Paul Getty Museum used its vast endowment to buy the finest antiquities on the market, few questions asked. The Medici archive and Italian investigators changed that. By matching Polaroids of freshly looted objects to pieces on display in Malibu, prosecutors built an overwhelming case that many of the Getty's masterpieces had been dug illegally and laundered through dealers.
In 2005, Italy put the Getty's antiquities curator, Marion True, on trial for conspiracy to traffic looted artifacts — the first time a major museum official faced such charges. The trial eventually lapsed on statute-of-limitations grounds, but the reputational damage was done.
Between 2006 and 2007 the Getty agreed to return around 40 objects to Italy, including the marble-and-limestone cult statue long displayed as 'Aphrodite,' and further pieces to Greece. In exchange, Italy offered long-term loans of comparable works.
The Getty cases, alongside the Metropolitan Museum's return of the Euphronios krater, marked a turning point: even the richest museum on earth could no longer treat provenance as someone else's problem.