Sicilian Protest Imperils Exhibition

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/22/arts/design/sicilian-protest-imperils-exhibition.html

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When it began its tour at the J. Paul Getty Museum in April, “Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome” was supposed to crown years of effort by some American museums to patch up relations with Italy over claims of looted antiquities.

Featuring dozens of antiquities from Sicilian collections, the exhibition at the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif., was scheduled to go to the Cleveland Museum of Art this fall before a final showing in Palermo next winter.

But all has not gone smoothly.

Sicilian officials now say that two star attractions — a dramatic six-foot-tall statue of a charioteer and an immaculate gold libation bowl, or phiale — should not travel to Cleveland because their absence is depriving Sicily of tourist dollars. And in a letter sent to the Getty and Cleveland museums this week, Sicily’s highest cultural official, Mariarita Sgarlata, noted that the region — which enjoys broad autonomy from Rome to shape its cultural policy — never signed a contract authorizing the exhibition in the first place.

In fact, the items were shipped from Italy months ago while the contract was being negotiated by Sicilian cultural officials who are no longer in office.

In an e-mail response to questions on Friday, Ms. Sgarlata, who is the assessor of culture for the Region of Sicily, asked, “How would an American tourist react who, trusting his Frommer’s travel guide,  has gone out of his way to visit the island of Mozia to admire this work of art in its original setting, only to discover that the statue is in Tokyo or St. Petersburg?”

It was not immediately clear how the museums would respond to the letter, which does not explicitly demand that the items be returned and leaves open the possibility that a compromise might be worked out. In a statement, David Franklin, the director of the Cleveland Museum of Art, said that he had “been in close contact” with the Getty to resolve the situation. He added that, “It would be a great disappointment not to share the significant objects this exhibition uniquely brings together with the people of Northeast Ohio.”

Getty officials said they are pursuing the matter through diplomatic channels with the Italian government but that it would be up to Cleveland to determine if it still wants to host the exhibition without the charioteer and the phiale. Ms. Sgarlata acknowledged that Cleveland would be unlikely to welcome the show without the two objects because they are the “focal point of the exhibition.”

Considered the first major survey of ancient Sicilian art in the United States, the exhibition makes a case for the importance of Sicily as a wellspring of artistic innovation in the classical world. Other works featured in the show, which is on view at the Getty through mid-August, include terra-cotta heads of Greek deities, a life-size statue of the fertility god Priapus, and five pieces of the Morgantina treasure — a hoard of silver-gilt bowls and utensils transferred to Sicily in 2006 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in an accord to resolve looted antiquities claims with the government of Italy.

The Getty said it has spent close to $1 million on the show and related costs. It has also built a $200,000 seismic isolator — an anti-earthquake display stand — for the charioteer, which will be used in its permanent home on the island of Mozia on the western coast of Sicily.

“The charioteer traveling to Cleveland was meant to be a celebration of what the Getty was able to do for this object,” said Timothy Potts, director of the Getty Museum.

But the conservation work on the statue in Los Angeles — following on an earlier loan of the work to the British Museum last summer — has kept it out of Sicily for more than a year, and that has made Sicilian officials impatient.

“We have a base for a statue that isn’t there,” Sergio Gelardi, the director of Sicily’s cultural heritage administration under Ms. Sgarlata, said in an interview with an Italian magazine this spring. In other comments to the Italian press in recent weeks, Ms. Sgarlata and Mr. Gelardi have said Sicily is considering charging foreign museums substantial fees for loans and is placing travel restrictions on masterpieces like the charioteer.

“I believe that these imbalanced exchanges” with American museums “have run their course,” Ms. Sgarlata said in her e-mail. “We are open to exchanges, if duly considered, and especially if they respect the concept of authentic reciprocity.”

The dispute is particularly awkward because the exhibition was supposed to bring closure to years of bruising conflicts with Italy over antiquities said to be looted. (The gold phiale itself was seized from a New York collection in 1995 by United States federal agents as a stolen object and, following litigation, returned to Sicily in 2000.)

The current exhibition grew out of a February 2010 memorandum of understanding between the museum and Sicily that followed the Getty’s decision to turn over dozens of ancient artworks to Italy and Sicily and that outlined a series of future collaborations.

Following that agreement, Getty officials said they paid for the conservation work and the anti-earthquake technology and agreed this year to relinquish to Sicily another work from its collection that is in the current exhibition, a terra-cotta head of Hades, because matching fragments were found at a Sicilian museum.

But in her letter to the museums this week, Ms. Sgarlata noted that the 2010 memorandum had expired in February and has not been renewed. And the separate, formal contract to authorize this particular exhibition ended up never being signed.

Those negotiations stalled, both sides agree, over terms requested this year by Antonino Zichichi, Ms. Sgarlata’s predecessor, who sought the museum’s help in promoting contemporary Sicilian art and asked them not to send the charioteer and the phiale to Cleveland. Nonetheless, the Sicilians did not withhold authorization to ship all the items to Los Angeles.

As it turned out, by the time the show opened, Ms. Sgarlata had succeeded Mr. Zichichi.

Mr. Potts, the director of the Getty, said that it was unusual but not unprecedented for an exhibition to open without a signed contract. But he acknowledged that fact has left the two museums with few options should the Sicilians press for the return for the two items.

“In my experience it’s a unique situation,” he said.