TRIAL BEGINS FOR FORMER GETTY CURATOR; NEW BOOK RIDICULES SAATCHI
A former antiquities curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles went on trial yesterday in Athens on charges of conspiring to acquire an ancient gold funerary wreath that Greek officials say was illegally removed from Greek soil about fifteen years ago, writes Anthee Carassava in the New York Times. The former curator, Marion True, did not attend the hearing. Her lawyer, Yannis Yannides, submitted a motion for dismissal, citing a California state law that sets a three-year statute of limitations for prosecution once a stolen artifact’s whereabouts have been made known. (The Getty acquired the wreath in 1993 and agreed to return it nearly a year ago, citing concerns about its provenance.) Greek investigators assert that the gold wreath was illegally excavated from an archaeological site in the northern province of Macedonia. True is also on trial in Italy on charges of trafficking in stolen antiquities acquired for the Getty. She has denied wrongdoing in both cases. In a related development, the Associated Press reports that a judge in Pesaro, Italy, yesterday dismissed a local prosecutor’s legal claim to a bronze statue of a youth that is in the Getty’s collection.
Artist Robert Gordon McHarg III has published a book that features 101 different photographs of Charles Saatchi wearing a variety of silly and sinister costumes. Vanessa Thorpe writes in The Guardian that the book, with the title HIM, repeatedly shows the face and upper body of what appears to be the country’s most influential art collector. In fact, the succession of images was created by simply dressing a larger-than-life waxwork figure of Saatchi in a series of bizarre outfits. In one of the McHarg shots, the art mogul is dressed as a cowboy, while in another, the Baghdad-born former star of the advertising industry is shown in the uniform and red beret commonly associated with Saddam Hussein. “The idea was to make an artwork that wasn’t for sale,” said McHarg, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. “In a sense, it’s the artist collecting the collector. A David and Goliath battle over power and punch lines.”
