UVa Flashback

One of my old professors was quoted in TIME magazine last week in an article about the Getty Museum.Case of the Looted Relics (Subscription may be required so here is the relevant section.)

Now the Getty is getting attention for the kinds of spending that museums don't brag about. Next month, the trial of former antiquities curator, Marion True, resumes in Italy on charges that she helped the museum buy 42 illegally looted Roman and Etruscan artifacts. True has denied the allegations, but last week she resigned after the revelation that a dealer involved in some of the purchases helped her get a loan for a vacation home in Greece. Critics of the museum say her case is a symptom of a culture of mismanagement and excess, in which the head of the museum's trust allegedly used the institution as a piggy bank to, among other things, buy himself a $72,000 car. The Getty, it seems, may be melting down faster than it was built up.

The tainted-goods charges are not unique to the Getty. For decades, ancient artifacts have been illicitly dug up and sold to see-no-evil museums. But the Getty was a notoriously aggressive collector, and some in the art world believe that its hunger and spending habits encouraged looting and theft. Ironically, True was responsible in 1995 for the Getty's adopting a strict policy of buying only well-documented pieces. "She extricated the museum from an ethical morass," says University of Virginia professor of art history Malcolm Bell. "It's extremely sad that the one person who understood that the intellectual integrity of her institution depended on respecting knowledge is now going on trial."

My professor, Malcolm Bell, taught Art History, and the class I was in was something like "Architecture of the Greek City" so it was a kind of Art/Architecture crossover. It was a small discussion-group class with maybe five of us in it, and I remember him as a little guy with red hair and beard and a wry sense of humor. The class was fun and interesting as much because of his enthusiasm as the material (which was fascinating to me). We focused on one small ancient Greek city for most of the semester. Our final exam? Write a story where the characters visit all the major important areas of the city, describing these areas and their relationships. I think I got an A.