'Looted' pottery traced to New York museum

Extending their reach beyond Los Angeles' J. Paul Getty Museum, Italian authorities have used confiscated photographs to trace six pieces of allegedly looted ancient Greek pottery to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

According to Italian court records, prosecutors also have photographs showing eight other allegedly looted objects that are part of a private collection acquired by Shelby White, a Met board member, and her late husband, financier Leon Levy.

The couple donated $20 million to the Met for new facilities to include a Roman and Greek sculpture court in their name.

Museum experts have speculated that the space is most likely being built to house the Levy-White collection.

If the Met eventually acquires the collection, one of the most significant still in private hands, the Italian photographs could become a complicating factor, the experts said.

Italian authorities allege that the objects identified at the Met and in the Levy-White collection were among thousands illegally excavated from tombs and ruins and smuggled out of the country long after a 1939 Italian law prohibited the unauthorised export of antiquities.

The objects represent only a small fraction of both collections, but are cited in Italian court records as proof that Giacomo Medici, an Italian dealer based in Switzerland, sold objects that ended up in the Met's collection.

The photographs, neatly catalogued Polaroids, were confiscated during a 1995 raid on his Geneva warehouse.

As such, the Italian evidence widens the controversy regarding museum ethics far beyond the Getty, which so far has been the only institution publicly singled out by Italian prosecutors.

Medici was convicted last year of trafficking in looted antiquities and is appealing a 10-year prison sentence.

His co-defendants, Robert E. Hecht Jr, an American antiquities dealer, and Marion True, the Getty's former antiquities curator, face trial next month.

Difficult Situation
Famous Big Apple institution in a bind

In 1996, the Getty acquired more than 300 antiquities from Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman, New York art patrons whose collection was considered one of the finest private holdings in the world.

Most of the objects had no documented ownership history.

Based on the Polaroid photographs seized from Medici's warehouse, the Italians have identified 11 objects from the Fleischman collection as having been looted and are seeking their return.

Thomas Hoving, the Met's director from 1967 to 1977 who has become an outspoken critic of acquisition practices at both the Getty and the Met, said on Friday that the new Italian evidence has put the New York museum on notice that the eight identified items in the Levy-White collection could be tainted.

If the Met acquires the collection, it could anger Italian prosecutors, but if it questions the objects' origins, it risks offending White, so it is in a bind, Hoving said.