Veteran of ownership disputes

WITH the Italian government aiming to prove in a Roman court that the Getty Museum has collected stolen artifacts, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that Michael Brand, the museum’s director-designate, will face issues of antiquities theft and foreign governments’ bids to have artworks repatriated.

Prosecutors contend that Marion True, the museum’s curator for antiquities and director of the Getty Villa, illegally acquired 42 looted artifacts, many of which are on display at the Getty. Her trial is scheduled to begin Nov. 16 in Rome. The Getty has backed True, who denies wrongdoing; Italian authorities see the case as a chance to fire a warning shot across the bow of anyone implicated in antiquities smuggling, including museums that receive objects whose source is suspect.

The issue won’t be a new one, however, for Brand, who is scheduled to take over at the Getty on Dec. 1 after finishing his tenure as director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. In 2002, the Egyptian government tried to get the Virginia museum to surrender a pink granite relief depicting a god; Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, sent a letter seeking the return of the piece, which is on permanent display.

But the claim was sketchy and confusing, says Suzanne Hall, spokeswoman for the Virginia museum. Hawass’ letter described the piece, supposedly looted from a temple at Behbeit el-Hagara, as a depiction of the god Hapi -- but it’s the museum’s belief that the relief, purchased in 1963 from a dealer in New York, shows a different god, Khonsu.

Hall says the museum researched the sculpture’s provenance, checked the Art Loss Register, a leading database of lost and stolen objects, and found no evidence that there was a problem. Museum attorneys twice wrote to the Egyptian government asking for more information, and received no answer, she says.

When he was in Los Angeles in mid-June for the opening of “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Hawass told The Times that the theft apparently had not been reported properly when it occurred and that his staff was gathering information to support the claim against the Virginia museum.

Last year, Brand and the Virginia museum’s board acted quickly to return a 16th century French painting after determining, within three months of learning of the claim, that there was strong proof it had been stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish collector who fled Vienna for Mexico in 1938. The Virginia museum had received “Portrait of Jean d’Albon,” believed to be by Corneille de Lyon, as a gift in 1950.

Returning it to the owner’s heirs “is simply the correct thing to do,” Brand said in a news release at the time. “The fact it has taken 60 years to determine the location of this painting is an indication of how complex and frustrating the search can be.”

-- Mike Boehm