Artwork returned, a partnership gained

The most dramatic outcome of Wednesday’s eagerly anticipated news of a deal between Italy and the Getty Museum over looted antiquities concerned the fate of Aphrodite. The monumental 5th century BC goddess, believed by many to be from the ancient Greek city of Morgantina on the island of Sicily, is easily among the greatest ancient sculptures in an American museum collection. Now it is among 40 works the Getty has agreed to return to Italy.

The logjam in negotiations was broken when Italy agreed to take its demand for the 4th to 2nd century BC “Victorious Youth,” also known as the Getty Bronze, off the table. Both sides have postponed resolution of that issue until Italy finishes a new criminal investigation of it.

Less dramatic -- but potentially more far-reaching -- is another aspect of the deal. Italy announced it would loan important works of ancient art to the beautifully refurbished Getty Villa, overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the edge of Malibu. Collection sharing among art museums is an idea whose appeal has been growing. Agreements like this will only accelerate the interest.

That prospect is significant for two main reasons.

First, the Getty Villa has an exclusive focus on antiquities. Unlike the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which struck similar deals with Italy last year, its collections don’t aspire to spanning global human history. The Getty has advantages that such encyclopedic museums don’t.

The Villa is, in fact, the only art museum in the United States devoted solely to the Greek, Etruscan, Roman and other cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. Loans of major objects to the Met and Boston will certainly add sheen to their great historical collections. But antiquities are just one small part of those museums’ attractions.

There is something to be said for the total immersion that a focused museum provides. Italy, where state collections of significant antiquities are anything but scarce, has the wherewithal to provide magnificent loans that will be extraordinarily meaningful in the Villa’s context. Art has richer import and significance in the context of other art.

Second, the museum can make the best use of those loans, given the Getty’s vast resources. Set aside the legal and ethical issues around the disputed Aphrodite for a moment. The work that has been done on the sculpture, in everything from conservation to historical and scientific research, is extraordinary. Dedicating those same resources to potential loans from Italy as well as to the exceptional objects in the Getty’s own collection holds enormous promise.

The Getty has been acquiring masterworks in a serious way for only about 25 years, making its collection development tough. By contrast, the Met and Boston began collecting late in the 19th century, when great art was plentiful and declining aristocracies in Europe were eager to transform into cash the paintings and sculptures accumulated over generations.

Indeed, art-world eyebrows went sky-high in June when the Getty did not buy the 2,000-year-old Roman bronze sculpture “Artemis and the Stag,” foolishly being sold off from the venerable collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y. It wasn’t cheap; on the block it fetched $28.6 million, becoming the most expensive antiquity and piece of sculpture from any period to sell at auction.

But given the quality of the Roman bronze, its pristine ownership record, the Getty collection’s gaps and -- not least -- the presence of the Getty Bronze, it seemed a natural purchase. (The Getty, like most museums, does not discuss such decisions.) Instead, a great ancient bronze on public view for 50 years disappeared into an unidentified private collection.

When adjusted for inflation, the cost of the Artemis was about $6 million less than the Getty paid for the monumental Aphrodite in the more tepid antiquities market 20 years ago. That expenditure has turned out to be more like a rental than an acquisition. The failure to permanently rescue the Artemis from oblivion was tragic.

One reason for the intense urgency that built up around the issue of looted antiquities is that museum (and private collector) demand now far outstrips art supply.

Smart collection sharing can help relieve the pressure.

There are practical dangers, mostly because of the constant transit of fragile art objects from place to place. But long-term loans, which are what the agreement with Italy appears to suggest, minimize that risk.

Italy has done some innovative thinking about ancient art. When Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli was mayor of Rome in the 1990s, he oversaw the much-admired sprucing up of the city in advance of millennium celebrations. Art museums were a focus of the monumental project.

Among the most inspired schemes was a new exhibition space for antiquities from the Capitoline Museum, carved out of an abandoned 1930s power station across town from the main facility.

The Centrale Montemartini now provides a fascinating exhibition space that juxtaposes ancient statues of Apollo, Athena and Dionysus against a backdrop of electrical turbines and industrial machinery. Power -- ancient and modern, agrarian and industrial, mythological and actual -- is marvelously evoked.

The Centrale Montemartini and the Getty Villa are very different venues, of course, but each is a creative response to a focused passion for ancient art. That’s the sort of helpful, art-centered enthusiasm that this week’s agreement between Rome and Los Angeles can continue to fuel.

christopher.knight@latimes.com