Italian authorities said to have evidence of looted works at MFA

[PUBLISHED CORRECTION - DATE: Friday, November 4, 2005: Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in Tuesday's Living/Arts section on Italy's assertion that Boston's Museum of Fine Arts possesses looted artifacts incorrectly said Hicham Aboutaam, a dealer who brokered an acquisition in 2004 with the Cleveland Museum of Art, had been convicted in an Egyptian court of smuggling art. It was his brother and business partner, Ali Aboutaam, who was convicted in Egypt. Ali Aboutaam was later cleared of those charges. Hicham Aboutaam pleaded guilty in New York to a misdemeanor federal charge of falsifying documents related to an ancient vessel sold by the brothers' gallery, Phoenix Ancient Art.]

Questions swirling around acquisitions by the J. Paul Getty Museum, which have roiled the art world, could implicate Boston's Museum of Fine Arts as well.

According to a Bloomberg News report yesterday, the Italian prosecutors aggressively pursuing charges that the Getty knowingly bought stolen art have evidence they say proves that the MFA also purchased looted works.

The claim, contained in court documents connected with the cases against a pair of art dealers and a former Getty curator with links to Boston, could put pressure on the MFA and a host of other museums to consider returning objects to Italy, according to antiquities experts who have been critical of the way museums acquire artifacts.

Prosecutors list 22 MFA objects, including a 2,500-year-old Greek vase currently on display in a museum gallery, according to Bloomberg.

''The MFA should be concerned," said Malcolm Bell, a University of Virginia archeologist who leads excavations in Sicily. ''If the Italians are making this very concerted effort to make claims on the Getty, it seems likely they'll do so with the other museums."

MFA spokesperson Dawn Griffin said that the MFA has not yet been contacted by the Italian authorities. ''We're sort of baffled by this list of 22," she said, adding that they do not have the list. The museum continues to do provenance research on its collection, she said.

Of the vase, Griffin said, ''As of now, we have nothing that says we should not have this object."

The MFA list is part of a larger case Italian authorities have built against the Getty, which is in Los Angeles. The officials want the Getty to return 42 objects, which they say were looted. The Italians have also brought to trial dealers Giacomo Medici and Robert E. Hecht Jr. and former Getty curator Marion True, who studied at Harvard University and once worked at the MFA. Medici was convicted and is appealing his 10-year prison sentence. Hecht and True are still awaiting trial.

Hecht, a prominent American dealer, sold works to the MFA over the years, including the ceramic Greek vase, which features two nude figures jumping to the music of a flute player. In the MFA's records, the piece is listed as owned in 1972 by Fritz Burki, a furniture dealer from Switzerland, before it was acquired the following year through Hecht. There is no prior history.

John Herrmann, Jr., curator of classical art at the MFA until his retirement last year, said that the MFA should not be asked to return the work.

''It's not a dirty piece," said Herrmann, who began working at the MFA in 1976, after the acquisition. ''It was openly for sale on the market. The Italian government could have bought it, I suppose. It's just that the Italian government prefers not to spend money on works of art but to take them by sovereign right."

Herrmann's former boss, retired curator Cornelius C. Vermeule III -- known for his aggressive acquisition approach -- was in Australia and could not be reached for comment yesterday, according to a woman reached at his home in Cambridge. Herrmann defended Vermeule's relationship with Hecht.

''Bob Hecht had terrific stuff," said Herrmann. ''And Cornelius liked to really improve our collections. The best way to do it is buy the best things you can. Isn't that what we try to do?"

Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said that any piece sold by Hecht should be considered dirty. Hoving orchestrated deals with Hecht while at the Met but later spoke out against him, saying he realized the museum should have been more careful in its purchases.

''Bob Hecht did not go to flea markets in Nebraska and buy Greek vases," said Hoving. ''My advice to the MFA is to send them back. Share them. We sent a bunch of guys to the moon. They can travel a bloody Greek vase."

The MFA hasn't considered returning any of the objects acquired through Hecht, according to MFA spokesperson Griffin. There are 116 in total, not including many coins also acquired through the dealer.

''If there was more information to be known about that, we would like to see it," she said. ''Everybody should be looking at provenance. Especially when Hecht's name really became tainted. All I can say is that the provenance research is an ongoing research."

The Boston Globe reported on Hecht's practices back in 1998, raising concerns about his dealings with museums, including the MFA and the Harvard University Art Museums. A series of recent articles by the Los Angeles Times has highlighted the case against the Getty. Last week, officials from the Metropolitan Museum of Art told the newspaper that they had requested a meeting with Italian officials in February to discuss concerns over works in its collection. Officials would not comment on a report that ''irrefutable proof" now existed that the Euphronios krater, purchased through Hecht in 1972 and considered the most prized Greek vase in the museum's collection, had been looted.

The Italian prosecutors could make similar claims against the MFA. ''If there was theft anywhere in the chain, under US law, they cannot acquire good title," said DePaul University law professor Patty Gerstenblith, cochair of the American Bar Association's cultural property committee. ''Italy could come into court in the United States as a private plaintiff and try to recover any number of objects under the principle that they are stolen property."

Gerstenblith, though, says she has her doubts over whether the Italians would pursue claims against the MFA and others listed in the Bloomberg article, which mentions the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Princeton University Art Museum. For one thing, it has been 12 years since the 1995 raid on Medici's warehouse in Switzerland that turned up photographs of the artworks detailed in the court reports cited by Bloomberg, and a statute of limitations could exist on the claims. But she does think the MFA could face pressure to deal more openly with the Italian government. ''The MFA might want to call up somebody in the Ministry of Culture and Italy and say, 'What are you thinking of doing, is there a real issue, is there some way we should be negotiating some of this and work something out?' " she said.

Roger Atwood, author of ''Stealing History: Tomb Raiders, Smugglers, and the Looting of the Ancient World," said that it hasn't been hard to find works of questionable provenance at the MFA. He has even organized tours of these potential looted objects for interested scholars, the most recent in February.

''I could go on for hours about antiquities at the MFA that give every sign of being looted, and the MFA must know that," he said.

The MFA says it is not aware that any of its pieces are stolen.

Museums continue to receive questionable works, Atwood said. He points to the Cleveland Museum of Art, which acquired in 2004 a bronze Apollo from an art dealer, Phoenix Ancient Art. After the purchase, Hicham Aboutaam, one of the dealership's owners, was convicted in an Egyptian court of smuggling art. The Cleveland Museum, in acquiring the work, said that it had been found in the 1980s by a retired German lawyer at his family's home.