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It was a video but it doesn't work on pptx 

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It was a video but it doesn't work on pptx 

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We were trying to add new posts and stories every day to engage with our followers. By posting celebrities' collections or non well known collection stories.

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MNFoIhO58_Jr_eKSiT1-alzK82fGV0QNIzlPIRJzfqA/edit#slide=id.g1a63ecd6c74_1_5

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Informing participants how images will be used

Originally we wanted to use street interview to increase the visibility of the exhibition, but we had to abandon this method because of the ethical review.

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https://jamboard.google.com/d/12pMHB9vwj_qkNnF7ranKjm6pwHwPhjEf6Q8IMDqBxNw/edit?usp=sharing

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CLICK AND COLLECT: An online exploration of collections in the museum and on the mantelpiece - Google Jamboard

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CLICK AND COLLECT: An online exploration of collections in the museum and on the mantelpiece

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Items with good input from the Getty (eg. labels, notes), so we can evaluate the Getty’s interpretation

Various cultures

Various dates/timeframes

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https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/109KKJ?altImage=779dd5f1-3eaa-4a7b-b012-e912c3e4ee8c

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Coin (tetradrachm) of Athens (The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection)

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https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RAH

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Family Group in an Interior (The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection)

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Family Group in an Interior (Getty Museum); about 1658-1660; Attributed to Quiringh Gerritsz. van Brekelenkam (Dutch, after 1622 - about 1669); Oil on canvas; 59.7 × 73.3 cm (23 1/2 × 28 7/8 in.);

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/13BlenN_OUNlOpmsxP--CPz2UnLQoTl_lBLcbhOPPPv4/edit

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https://www.vam.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/238077/Gallery-Text-at-the-V-and-A-Ten-Point-Guide-Aug-2013.pdf

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Big idea: Why do people collect and what effects does that have on the objects in the Getty’s collection?

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Big idea: Why do people collect and what effects does that have on the objects in the Getty’s collection?

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The Getty’s collection (Subject) is based on J.Paul Getty’s personal collection and other objects that often used to be part of other personal collections as well.

So why do people collect? If we can understand that, we can also understand the museum's collection and its history in more depth. (Action)

Collecting affects us all! Almost one in three people in North America are collectors. By investigating the phenomena of collecting we not only start to better understand the museum as an institution, but we also gain insight into our own psychology. (Consequence)

Collecting and the reasons for collecting something?

Why do you collect and what impact does it have on your life and that of others?

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Personal Identity

Branding

Emotional connection

Lived experiences and memory

Demonstration of wealth and power

Monetary

What sort of things do people not collect?
Textiles and using the objects -> Usability -> Wearing clothes

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First sentence as a question?

Gettys mission statement -> advancement: "Getty advances and shares the world’s visual art and cultural heritage for the benefit of all." they connect themselves with world heritage

Who were the Duveen brothers, and what did they do?

Art market - objects from Europe coming to America (why are all these European objects here in LA)

Association with Europe vs first nation art

Ownership over the European objects

Specific historical context (overall timeframe) to introduce the issue

Why did this get to America?

Why do we collect?

Label stracutue

Subject (the person, place, thing, or idea that is doing or being something)

Action (something happens or has been done, but crucially is active, not passive)

Consequences (so what), why should anyone care?

Example:People in the artic (SUBJECT) have ‘harnessed the weather and climate to thrive’ (ACTION 1), their way of life is being threatened by climate change (ACTION 2), we must pay attention to the people who will be affected first by climate change so we make the changes we need to make to mitigate climate change (CONSEQUENCE)

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General label explaining why people collect certain material objects e.g. coins, paintings …
(a couple of sentences focusing on particular themes)

Choose a few objects per section

One to two detailed labels

Maybe pose questions for the other items chosen
(why that object specifically has been collected, and the provenance)

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Do you ever want to put an object from a different culture into your home to decorate it? How do you feel about that?

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Do you ever want to put an object from a different culture into your home to decorate it? How do you feel about that?

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1. Collecting for the sake of collecting

2. An institutional level and a personal level

3. Our personal collections of souvenirs etc.

4. Gettys personal collection

5. People posting their own collections and souvenirs

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Art market? Market Demand for Art Collections

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Art market? Market Demand for Art Collections

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We found Duveen Brothers as the primary source of acquisitions for the Getty Centre, allowing these works of art to travel from Europe to the United States via the dealer. Why does an art market exist? Why do these buyers of artworks buy them? It is because there is a demand to buy that art is stolen and smuggled into other countries, and we think that buying art is, in fact, a form of collecting. We don't just think of the act of taking something home; it's like people going on a trip and buying souvenirs of the place. Although we don't know if there are other meanings to souvenirs, buying souvenirs is a form of collecting.

The words of the man in the Korean dress inspire us. Rubens had never been to Korea, so how did he draw the man in Korean dress?

Duveen brothers as an entry point

Giving an overview of them, the time, surviving the great depression, and relevance for the market. Paving the way for the market and fascination with collecting in America.
Main Ideas
Collecting
Identity
Ownership

What does it have to do with forming an American identity, creating a story, and tracing a heritage back to Europe?

The reason the Getty exists is because of a personal collection!

Desire for authenticity when collecting?

Do people want something authentic in their homes?

Obsession with getting something from “the other place”

https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103QWV

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Man in Korean Costume (The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection)

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Man in Korean Costume (Getty Museum); about 1617; Peter Paul Rubens (Flemish, 1577 - 1640); Black chalk with touches of red chalk in the face; 38.4 × 23.5 cm (15 1/8 × 9 1/4 in.); 83.GB.384

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Collecting ancient art has been a pastime of the affluent since ancient Rome. 

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Collecting ancient art has been a pastime of the affluent since ancient Rome. 

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Making generalizations about the motivations of why people collect can be problematic. Social status, intellectual identity, and the display of wealth have all been enduring motivations for the collection of ancient art. Less understood is one aspect of collecting that hovers in the background but is ever present is the impulse to collect for the sake of collecting. The appreciation of beautiful art and the need to possess it should never be underestimated as a motivation to acquire. Collecting is a very personal activity, and individual reasons can vary from person to person. Very few collectors are one-dimensional, and their motivations are often multifaceted.

Some people collect bottle caps. Others collect rare ancient art. Collections can be seen as both worthless low-brow garbage and priceless high-brow art. For individuals their collections mean something to them, whether it is sentimental memories or part of their intellectual identity. Art collectors use their collections for various purposes. One of the most obvious reasons is for social status, but there are deeper intellectual and psychological factors that are behind the impulse of collecting art.

https://www.cntraveler.com/story/what-role-do-souvenirs-play-in-cultural-appropriation

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The ethics of bringing items from around the world into your home can be hazy.

For the ethical traveler, cultural appropriation can, and should be, a weighing concern. The discussion around it has also been unfolding on social media for years, with a heightening frenzy. We've reached a point where most people know and understand that you shouldn't be wearing a Native American headdress to a music festival, and that a traditional-garment-as-Halloween-costume is never okay. But when it comes to the items we buy while traveling, things tend to get hazier.

Souvenirs, by nature, are meant to represent a sliver of a place not our own. Some argue that this exchange is, in fact, what travel is all about-and how culture and traditions are created in the first place. But navigating the lines of cultural appropriation, and appreciation, can be particularly challenging when you're standing in a market halfway around the world, with only a days-old familiarity of the local culture. And unfortunately, even with the best intentions, missteps happen, leaving many with one burning question: What is the onus on travelers to ensure their purchases aren't problematic?

"From a cultural perspective, even from the earliest of contact between Hawaiians and the outside world, there was a desire for gifting and exchanging," says Noelle Kahanu, a specialist in public humanities and Native Hawaiian programs at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, who also has a background in historic preservation and cultural issues on the mainland. "Hawaiians wanted to project their [ mana], or things that mattered, that embodied what Hawaii was, and that desire to manifest [those things] elsewhere is one that has been with us for centuries."

Knowing that context means asking ourselves how we want to perpetuate that tradition. "The question then is, for what purpose [is the exchange happening]?" says Kahanu. Are souvenirs being purchased, or gifts being sought, she asks, as memory keepers? Is the purchase intended to support the local arts community? Or, is it more about finding something to fill a vague need-an anything-trinket for someone who expects a gift upon your return; or, something "vaguely tropical" just because it might look great in the new guest bathroom. "To what extent are you trying to tap into that desire to travel, but the actual cultural reference points are gobbledygook?" says Kahanu.

Kahanu urges travelers, in Hawaii and elsewhere, to step back and take a look at the intentions of the trip itself-why you're traveling, where you're going, and the footprint you want to leave behind. Doing so will ultimately lead to richer, more intentional experiences, and help you discover souvenirs you have a true relationship with.

When it comes to the actual shopping process, however, there are a few things to keep in mind. For Nasozi Kakembo, the owner and founder of fair-trade home decor company xN Studio, the process she uses to select and sell items on her site echoes the way she thinks mindful travelers should approach purchasing items from other cultures-whether in a shop half-way around the world, or online. "When I'm making the description [for a product] on the website, I really prioritize the traditional meaning and the original context of the item, in addition to selling it for its aesthetic virtues, and values," says Kakembo. "The story is just as valuable to me as the item itself, and I really want to encourage and impose that information on anybody who comes to any of my channels."

For Kakembo, getting that story right, in a way that helps her feel comfortable selling items made in Uganda, for example, to American customers, requires understanding an item's cultural context in the place that it is from, in addition to being specific and using the proper names for the item or people who create and use it. Ultimately, she is trying to counter what too often happens to such items. "Pieces from the African continent have been misappropriated just in terms of further removing them and stripping them of their identity," says Kakembo. "I've seen West African textiles in Uganda, I've seen Juju hats, which are from Cameroon, in markets in Cape Town, and I wouldn't expect the average traveler to have any idea. But I hope that, to the extent that a traveler can, they engage that vendor, ask them where the item comes from."

"Telling the story is a very critical antidote to appropriation."

Amy Yeung, the Diné founder of New Mexico-based Orenda Tribe, which upcycles clothing from around the world and sells Native-made items, agrees: "If you're going to be curious, if you want to invite something beautiful into your life, find out some history on it," says Yeung. "People are used to doing searches before making purchases, so do some research, type in some description of what it is [before you buy]."

When you do have context on an item, pass that on if you gift it to someone else, and be specific about what you know, says Kakembo. "If there's an item that you're buying from a member of the Baganda tribe in Uganda, then don't say, Oh, this is from Africa." She suggests including these notes on a gift card, so they can be referenced as the item continues to move through the world. "Telling the story is a very critical antidote to appropriation."

Kahanu, Kakembo, and Yeung all note the paramount importance of the price you pay-and who you pay it to. Is the item you're looking at made by someone from the culture it represents; and is the seller from the community? Kahanu hopes that more destinations, including Hawaii, will adopt formalized methods of denoting when a work is Native-made, which has been done in Alaska with the Silver Hand symbol, and in New Zealand, with the Toi Iho mark for items made by Maori artisans.

"If it's somebody non-Native selling a Native item, I think there's definitely a capitalistic idea behind that," says Yeung. "And the sale price is [going to be] so much more than what the maker got paid." Her team has recently opened up a portal on Orenda Tribe's site where Diné weavers can sell their items without having to go through markets and antiquated trading posts that further remove artist from buyer, and devalue artists' time.

Ultimately, the most important part of the discourse, they all believe, is the conversation itself. Anyone looking for clear cut rules on what is okay or not to buy or wear, based on who they are and where they are, won't find them. (Kahanu and Kakembo, for example, say they aren't sure any items, even the ceremonial, are wholly off-limits to travelers, if the proper awareness and respect is there.)

Within that grey area, dialogue proves far more productive than shaming. "We can't yell at people when they don't know," says Yeung. Instead, she encourages people to discuss the issues that cause a lack of awareness, or misrepresentation. She also asks herself how she, personally, can play a bigger role in educating others on the cultural norms and customs she's aware of.

In the long run, it's not just about how you purchase the items, but how you continue to interact with them. "I think it's better to invest in something that matters, and maybe it hangs on your wall or sits on a shelf, as opposed to being thrown in a box," says Kahanu. "The desire to have something [from a destination] can be really meaningful if you make the investment to come home with something that's worthy of being shown and displayed and seen."

"If you sourced it properly, and you paid a fair price for it," says Kakembe, "then you can do with it as you please-just continue to respect the item." For anyone with a genuine interest in the world, it's hardly too much to ask.

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What Role Do Souvenirs Play in Cultural Appropriation?

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The ethics of bringing items from around the world into your home can be hazy. For the ethical traveler, cultural appropriation can, and should be, a weighing concern. The discussion around it has also been unfolding on social media for years, with a heightening frenzy.

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The brothers played into the hands of their collector customers - dealt with well-known and famous artists, not investing in new artists. Purely financial gain.

They ‘created’ the market in America.

Importance of ‘bric-a-brac’ - a range of types of art to help the brothers survive changes in the market - eg Great Depression. Almost like staying on top of trends.

Focused only on the high-end luxury market

The Duveen Galleries - How did their approach to displaying items impact how we display them today? The idea of the ‘art studio’ (a place to study works) rather than a gallery for business. But ultimately, it worked for commercial benefit too.

Items that have come into contact with the Duveen Brothers appear to have permanently left Europe and got to America via them. Yet do have a significant ‘previous life’.

Duveen understood the personalities of American millionaires and catered to them while also playing incredible mind games with them.

https://digitalcommons.sia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=stu_theses

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Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
Type: Art Museum (Private)
Types of collections: European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculptures, decorative arts, and photographs.
Eras of collections: BCE - present

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Unknown provenance or unlawfully acquired?

A group of lifesize terracotta statues had been stolen and smuggled out of Italy.

Return the objects

The museum is also working with the Italian culture ministry to return four other relics, including three works bought in the 1970s and an 1881 oil painting by Camillo Miola called The Oracle, after research by scholars concluded the objects had also been illegally removed from Italy.

What we thought about this?

Getty’s Mission Statement:
“Getty advances and shares the world’s visual art and cultural heritage for the benefit of all.”

Do they ‘advance’ the world’s knowledge as they claim to?

How can we critique this?
Drawing similarities between the UK history of museums being centred in colonialism.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/aug/12/getty-museum-to-send-stolen-terracotta-statues-back-to-italy#:~:text=The%20Getty%20Museum%20in%20Los,and%20smuggled%20out%20of%20Italy

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The Getty Museum in Los Angeles is returning a group of lifesize terracotta statues, dating back to between 350 and 300BC, and four other objects to Rome after an investigation concluded the relics had been stolen and smuggled out of Italy.

The three statues, known as Orpheus and the Sirens, have been removed from display at the museum and are being prepared for transport back to Rome in September.

The set of statues, which depict a seated man and two mythical sirens, was bought by John Paul Getty from a now defunct private bank in Switzerland in 1976.

They are believed to have originated from the Taranto area in the southern Italian region of Puglia, and since 2006 have been on a list of stolen artefacts that Italy has been seeking to reclaim possession of.

The museum said in a statement that it determined the items must be returned to Rome following an investigation carried out by Matthew Bogdanos, who heads the antiquities trafficking unit of Manhattan's district attorney office.

The Oracle by Camillo Miola. Photograph: Artokoloro/Alamy

The museum is also working with the Italian culture ministry to return four other relics, including three works bought in the 1970s and an 1881 oil painting by Camillo Miola called The Oracle, after research by scholars concluded the objects had also been illegally removed from Italy.

"We value our strong and fruitful relationship with the Italian ministry of culture and with our many archaeological, conservation, curatorial, and other scholarly colleagues throughout Italy, with whom we share a mission to advance the preservation of ancient cultural heritage," said the Getty director, Timothy Potts.

Meanwhile, 260 Etruscan, Greek and Roman artefacts that were looted from Italy before ending up in US museums, private collections or auction houses are gradually being returned after the conclusion of an investigation late last year. The items are being displayed in the recently created Museum of Rescued Art, which is being hosted in a space among the ruins of the ancient Baths of Diocletian in Rome.

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Many of the 260 relics were looted during clandestine digs by tombaroli, or tomb-raiders, dating back to the early 1980s, before being smuggled out of Italy. Among them was an ancient Roman sculpture that almost ended up in the possession of Kim Kardashian.

More than 3m stolen artefacts have been retrieved by Italy's cultural heritage protection squad since the unit was established in 1969.

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Getty Museum to send stolen terracotta statues back to Italy

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The Getty Museum in Los Angeles is returning a group of lifesize terracotta statues, dating back to between 350 and 300BC, and four other objects to Rome after an investigation concluded the relics had been stolen and smuggled out of Italy.

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Potentially looted artworks being acquired

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Potentially looted artworks being acquired

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Stolen art? Ethics? Controversial objects in the collection

Walsh, the former museum director, said: “We all agreed -- and the acquisition policy is clear -- that nothing would justify buying an object that we knew or strongly suspected was stolen.”

Do they ‘advance’ the world’s knowledge as they claim to?
Is this an ‘Americanised’ approach?

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-sep-25-me-getty25-story.html

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Attorneys for the J. Paul Getty Museum have determined that half the masterpieces in its antiquities collection were purchased from dealers now under investigation for allegedly selling artifacts looted from ruins in Italy.

Italian authorities have identified dozens of objects in the Getty collection as looted, including ancient urns, vases and a 5-foot marble statue of Apollo.

For the record:

For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday October 09, 2005 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 5 inches; 199 words Type of Material: Correction
Getty antiquities -- A Page 1 article on Sept. 25 reported on allegations by Italian officials that some items in the antiquities collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum had been looted from Italian archeological sites. The article quoted from notes made in 1996 by the museum's then-general counsel, summarizing a conversation she had with Deborah Gribbon about the acquisition of antiquities. The article identified Gribbon as the museum's director, but she was deputy director at the time. The article also said Gribbon had no comment on the notes. Gribbon says she was not asked to comment on that aspect of the article and that she has no memory of the conversation.Gribbon has also taken issue with The Times' account of how the Getty acquired three antiquities now identified by Italian officials as having been looted. The article said Getty officials learned from a 1985 memo that three objects they were acquiring might have been illegally excavated in Italy but went ahead with the $10.2-million acquisition anyway. Gribbon maintains that the acquisition had been completed before receipt of the memo. She said Getty officials had no indication before the acquisition that the items might have been illegally excavated.

The Italians have Polaroid photographs seized from a dealer's warehouse in Switzerland that show Getty artifacts in an unrestored state, some encrusted with dirt -- soon after they were dug from the ground, Italians officials say.

In response to the Italian investigation, Getty lawyers combed through the museum's files and questioned staff members over several months in 2001, trying to assess the legal exposure of the world's richest art institution.

The Times recently obtained hundreds of pages of Getty records, some of them related to the museum's internal review.

Those documents show that Getty officials had information as early as 1985 that three of their principal suppliers were selling objects that probably had been looted and that the museum continued to buy from them anyway.

In correspondence with the Getty, the dealers made frank, almost casual references to ancient sites from which artifacts had been excavated, apparently in violation of Italian law, the records show. The Getty's outside attorney considered the letters "troublesome" and advised the museum not to turn them over to Italian authorities.

Although Italy is seeking the return of 42 objects, the Getty's lawyers did their own assessment and determined that the museum had purchased 82 artworks from dealers and galleries under investigation by the Italians.

They include 54 of the 104 ancient artworks that the Getty has identified as masterpieces.

The internal Getty documents include memos, purchase agreements, correspondence and other records going back 20 years. They paint a picture of a young, aggressive institution determined to build a world-class collection as governments were placing tight restrictions on the antiquities trade.

Among the findings:

* A 1985 memo shows that Getty officials learned from dealer Giacomo Medici that three objects the museum was acquiring had been taken from ruins near Naples decades after Italian law made it illegal. The Getty completed the $10.2-million acquisition anyway.

* An acting curator accused the Getty in a 1986 resignation letter of turning a blind eye to problems in the antiquities department. With eerie prescience, he said the museum's "curatorial avarice" would someday lead to an external investigation and demands from a foreign government for the return of looted artifacts.

* In 1987, Harold Williams, then chief executive of the Getty Trust, and John Walsh, then director of the museum, discussed the "prevailing assumption" that antiquities with no documented ownership had probably been looted, according to Walsh's handwritten notes. Williams referred to one of the Getty's main dealers, Robin Symes, as a "fence," according to the notes, and asked his staff: "Are we willing to buy stolen property for some higher aim?"

Williams and Walsh say they were speaking hypothetically and that the museum never knowingly bought looted artworks.

* In correspondence with Marion True, the Getty's curator of antiquities, Medici and another dealer, Robert E. Hecht Jr., described artifacts they were offering for sale in terms that suggested they were illegally excavated. In one letter, Hecht told True that an ancient urn was being sought by Italian police. The Getty later purchased the object.

* In 1993, the Getty bought an ancient gold funerary wreath despite True's initial misgivings that the piece was "too dangerous" to acquire. The Getty later received a copy of an Interpol cable describing the item as having an "illicit origin."

Italian authorities have charged True, Hecht and Medici with conspiring to traffic in looted antiquities. Medici was convicted last year and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He has remained free while he appeals.

The trial for True and Hecht began in July and is scheduled to resume in November in Rome.

Medici, Hecht and Symes deny knowingly selling looted art.

The Italian legal offensive poses a threat to one of the Getty's most important collections as the museum prepares to reopen the Getty Villa in Malibu as a showcase for antiquities after a six-year, $275-million renovation.

True and her attorneys declined to comment for this article, beyond asserting her innocence.

In a statement, the Getty said Friday that it had "never knowingly acquired an object that had been illegally excavated or exported.... "

Although dealers under investigation "have been discredited," the Getty statement said, that "does not mean that any object acquired from one of them was illegally excavated or exported."

The Getty said it could not comment further on issues raised by "privileged and confidential information" from the Getty's files without jeopardizing True's right to a fair trial.

"Based upon the information and evidence that it has seen, the Getty continues to believe that Dr. True's trial should result in her exoneration," the statement said.

In a separate statement, Williams, the former chief executive, said that it "had been common practice for decades for reputable museums and collectors to acquire" artifacts with no documented ownership history, particularly when "possible countries of origin were doing nothing to protect their sites or enforce their laws."

Walsh, the former museum director, said: "We all agreed -- and the acquisition policy is clear -- that nothing would justify buying an object that we knew or strongly suspected was stolen."

Countries Outlaw the Plundering of Antiquities

For centuries, the Mediterranean's ancient ruins had been plundered by invading armies and touring colonialists, amateur collectors and farmers-turned-tomb raiders. When oil magnate John Paul Getty began buying antiquities in the 1930s, collectors were more interested in whether artifacts were authentic than in whether they had been legally excavated and exported.

In 1939, the Italian government declared that all ancient objects uncovered from Italian soil after 1902 were state property and could not be sold or exported without government permission. But the restriction, like other so-called patrimony laws, was not widely recognized by other countries, and illegal trafficking continued.

That was changing by the time Getty died in 1976, leaving his fledgling museum $700 million to build on his collection.

In 1970, a UNESCO convention called on governments to make it illegal to "import, export or transfer ownership" of cultural property without permission from the country of origin. Italy ratified the convention in 1979. The U.S. Congress followed in 1983.

By then, American criminal law was already getting tough on antiquities trafficking.

In 1977, five American dealers were convicted in Texas of conspiring to sell looted artifacts from Mexico. The case recognized the foreign government's ownership claim and established that the artifacts were stolen property under U.S. law.

By the early 1980s, "people were on notice that if they knowingly dealt in archeological artifacts illegally removed from a country with a national ownership law, they were committing a crime in the United States," said Patty Gerstenblith, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago and co-chairwoman of the American Bar Assn.'s international cultural property committee.

The Getty and other museums faced a dilemma. One choice was to limit their purchases to antiquities held by established collections and accompanied by documents showing they had been legally excavated and exported. But the pool of such objects was small.

The alternative was to take a chance on objects without documented ownership history, or provenance. Although it is difficult to prove that such objects have been looted, the consensus today among archeologists and legal experts is that most were probably removed without the source country's permission.

In recent years, court rulings have demolished what had been a common defense among curators and collectors: that they did not know artworks had been looted.

In 1999, the U.S. government reclaimed a golden libation bowl and returned it to Italy at the request of Italian authorities. A wealthy New York collector who paid $1.2 million for the item said he didn't know it had been smuggled. A federal appeals court upheld the seizure.

In 2002, a New York jury convicted a prominent dealer of conspiring to sell a stolen sculpture of an Egyptian pharaoh. The defendant claimed he didn't know it had been stolen. The judge told jurors that they could consider the dealer's deliberate avoidance of knowledge the equivalent of knowing it had been stolen. Higher courts upheld the conviction.

Despite the changing legal environment, looters have remained active. They descend on archeological sites, searching for buried objects with long metal probes. In Italy, they have been known to dig up tombs with backhoes.

The looters work in concert with smugglers who spirit items out of the country, usually to Switzerland, where lax laws have until recently allowed smugglers to flourish.

Publicly, the Getty and True have decried looting.

In a 2000 speech in Denver to the Assn. of Art Museum Directors, True argued against the practice of presuming that antiquities without provenance are "innocent until proven guilty."

"Experience has taught me that in reality, if serious efforts to establish a clear pedigree for the object's recent past prove futile, it is most likely -- if not certain -- that it is the product of the illicit trade, and we must accept responsibility for this fact," she said.

Four months after the speech, Italian officials informed the Getty that True was a target of their investigation.

The case stemmed from a breakthrough in Italy's long-running effort to curb trafficking, a 1995 raid by Swiss police on a warehouse in Geneva used by Medici, the Italian who supplied many of the Getty's dealers.

Authorities found nearly 4,000 artifacts in various stages of restoration, as well as neatly organized albums with Polaroid photos of thousands of other objects already sold.

The photos depicted what appeared to be freshly excavated objects: ancient pots still in pieces, marble statues covered in dirt. The Italians were very eager to know what had become of them.

Acting Curator Investigates Provenance of 3 Objects

On learning of the Italian investigation in 2000, the Getty hired a New York criminal defense attorney, Richard Martin, to conduct an internal review.

Among the documents Martin and his colleagues found was a memo showing that the Getty had purchased items excavated from an Italian site long after Italian law prohibited it.

In the confidential October 1985 memo, Arthur Houghton, acting curator of antiquities, told Deborah Gribbon, then deputy director of the museum and later its director, that he had looked into the origins of three objects the Getty was acquiring from New York businessman Maurice Tempelsman, a private collector.

They were a ceremonial marble basin with a painted scene from Homer's "Iliad," a sculpture of two mythical griffons attacking a fallen deer and a marble statue of Apollo. The Getty paid $10.2 million for the objects, which date back 2,300 years.

Houghton had been asked to comment on another expert's theory that the artworks were found together. In the memo, he wrote that he had contacted Medici and learned that the dealer "had bought all three objects from the excavators."

According to the memo, Medici told Houghton that two of the artifacts had been unearthed from a tomb in Southern Italy in 1976 or 1977 and the third from the ruins of a villa nearby.

"The fact that the dealer is asserting that he got them from excavators -- that is important," Ricardo Elia, a Boston University associate professor of archeology and an expert on the antiquities trade, said in an interview. "It means that the buyers at the Getty would be knowingly buying looted and smuggled antiquities."

The Houghton memo identified Hecht and Symes as middlemen in the sale of the artworks to Tempelsman.

The records contain no indication that Houghton or Gribbon reconsidered the purchase based on what Medici had revealed. All three objects remain in the collection.

Years later, the Polaroid photos found in Medici's Swiss warehouse revealed more about their origin. One of the photos shows the Apollo lying on a board, unrestored and dirty.

The Italian Carabinieri, or paramilitary police, later posted the picture on its website, calling it an example of "looted art that needs to be returned."

Asked for comment earlier this month, Gribbon sent an e-mail denying that she or anyone else at the Getty engaged in illegal behavior, adding that patrimony laws "were little known and seldom enforced" at that time.

The information in the Houghton memo was "unverified" and did not prove that the artworks had been illegally excavated, said Gribbon, who resigned last year as director of the Getty Museum.

Houghton, who declined to comment, resigned from the Getty in 1986. His resignation letter said he was fed up that his attempts to investigate a predecessor's conduct had been stifled.

That was the letter in which Houghton criticized the museum for "curatorial avarice" and said Getty leadership had chosen "a path of self-enforced ignorance of fact." He predicted that the Getty could face "the demand by another country or institution for the return of material in the museum's collection."

Failing to deal with these issues, he warned, would be "catastrophic" for the Getty's reputation.

'Troublesome' Letters About 'Illegal Excavations' Cited

On April 30, 1986 -- the date of Houghton's resignation -- True was named curator of antiquities.

True had held positions at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Harvard University's Fogg Art Museum and a London antiquities dealership. She was completing her doctorate at Harvard, where she specialized in ancient Greek vases.

True had met Hecht in 1972 or 1973, when she was a curatorial assistant at the Boston museum. Hecht is the scion of an East Coast department store family who has lived in Europe for decades, nursing a passion for coins and antiquities.

In 1972, Hecht sold New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art an urn painted by Euphronious, the master painter of ancient Greece. Allegations that the artifact had been recently looted from Italy sparked an international controversy. The allegations were not proved, and the Metropolitan kept the urn.

True also knew Medici. She was introduced to him at an auction in Switzerland around 1984, she has told Italian officials. Medici used four Geneva warehouses with showrooms.

In letters to True uncovered during the Getty's internal review, Hecht and Medici made little effort to hide their involvement in selling items of suspicious origin.

In one undated, handwritten letter, Hecht informed True that an ancient vase, or pelike, he had offered to the Getty might not be available because Italian authorities were looking for it.

"Yesterday my friend called me [and] said that since the Carabinieri were looking for the pelike with the arms of Achilles he abandoned negotiations. So I will not have it," Hecht wrote. "Perhaps others may acquire it. Sorry. Best wishes, Bob."

The Getty purchased the pelike for $42,000 in July 1986.

Museum files list the seller as Fritz Burki, Hecht's Swiss antiquities restorer. Italian court records say Burki has admitted that he frequently "possessed, restored and transferred as dummy -- in particular to the J. Paul Getty Museum -- various objects of illegal provenance received by Medici and Hecht."

In 1991, True wrote to Medici asking for information about the origins of three pottery fragments in the Getty's collection on behalf of a staff member who was studying them.

In handwritten Italian, Medici replied that the fragments came from a "chamber-type tomb" at Cerveteri, one of the most heavily looted sites in Italy.

Martin, the Getty's attorney, wrote a memo to Getty chief executive Barry Munitz in 2001 describing the letters as "troublesome" because they "support the conclusion that Medici and Hecht were involved in dealing with objects which appeared to be from illegal excavations in Italy."

Although the dealers' letters do not amount to proof, Martin wrote, True's responses do not address the "questionable provenance of the items" or "raise any objections to the plain suggestion that the Getty would be interested in such items."

In a recent interview, Hecht denied that his letters implied the objects were looted. Asked if he ever sold looted art, he said: "It depends on what you call looted. I will believe it's looted when I see the documents that prove it's looted."

The Getty's 'Single Greatest Piece of Ancient Art'

In June 1986, True visited Symes at his London office and learned that he was selling a remarkably preserved statue of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

The towering sculpture depicts the goddess draped in a wet, windblown gown, her right arm extended toward her worshippers. Part limestone and part marble, the piece probably dates to 400 BC and was the centerpiece of a Greek temple in south Italy or Sicily.

True later told the Getty's acquisition committee that the Aphrodite could become "the single greatest piece of ancient art in our collection. It would be the greatest piece of classical sculpture in this country and any country outside of Greece and Great Britain."

Symes said the statue came from an unnamed collector in Switzerland. He offered little else to establish a legitimate provenance, records show.

The statue was unknown to the academic world, leading some scholars and Italian authorities to conclude it almost certainly had been recently looted and smuggled out of Italy.

The Getty had outside attorneys send a notice to foreign governments, including Italy, that an unnamed "major American institution" was considering buying the statue and asking for any information about its provenance.

While the Getty waited to see if the Italians would respond, Williams, then the chief executive, met with Walsh, then museum director. Walsh took handwritten notes of the conversation and a subsequent meeting.

"We are saying we won't look into the provenance," Williams said, according to Walsh's notes of a meeting on Sept. 2, 1987.

"We know it's stolen," the notes quote Williams as saying. "Symes a fence."

The notes also indicate that the men anticipated that a foreign government would demand the return of antiquities in the Getty's collection. Williams is quoted as suggesting that the museum ask Symes about the origin of other items he was offering for sale.

Williams then posed a question: "If he doesn't defend, do we surrender to the government?"

The Times reviewed the notes separately with Walsh and Williams, who confirmed their authenticity.

Both men said their remarks were strictly about a new acquisition policy, not about the Aphrodite. Williams said he used Symes as an example because he was a prominent dealer.

"I was going through various hypothetical situations: What if we receive a stolen object? What if it turns out one of our dealers -- say someone like Symes -- turns out to be a fence?" said Williams, a lawyer who has served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, dean of the UCLA business law school and board member of Times Mirror Corp., former parent company of the Los Angeles Times.

Walsh said: "He was not talking about a specific object. Neither he nor any of us had information that any work we were considering buying was stolen."

Two days after their Sept. 2, 1987, meeting, Williams and Walsh met with True and Bruce Bevan, then a Getty lawyer, to discuss "antiquities ethics," Walsh's notes show.

Williams told the group that the "prevailing assumption" about artifacts with no documented ownership was the "likelihood that they are stolen -- in violation of laws," the notes say.

He left the group with this question:

"Are we willing to buy stolen property for some higher aim?"

In a recent interview, Williams said he "probably" overstated the question to provoke his staff to reflect on the implications of the Getty's acquisitions.

With Williams' question in mind, Walsh said, he went back to his office and jotted the outlines of a new policy. First, he described the ethical challenge facing the Getty, as Williams had summed it up:

"1. We knowingly buy stolen goods.

"2. We knowingly deal with liars by accepting their warranties."

Walsh then sketched what would become the museum's first formal antiquities policy in 1987. It called for the museum to ask for information from dealers about objects they were selling and, before making a purchase, to ask the country of origin whether there was proof an item had been stolen.

The Getty would also publicize an acquisition quickly and return it if shown evidence that it was looted, Walsh wrote.

Asking foreign governments for evidence is unlikely to elicit information about an object's origin because illegally excavated artifacts are by definition undocumented, experts say.

In the case of the Aphrodite, Italian officials informed the Getty's attorneys that they had "no information as to the origin and authenticity."

Records show the Getty bought the statue in 1988 for $18 million, a sum not previously disclosed. It was the most the museum had ever paid for an antiquity. In keeping with its practice, the Getty also did not reveal the source of the statue: Symes.

But Getty officials built stringent safeguards into the museum's contract with Symes in case evidence surfaced that the statue had been looted. The museum paid $9 million upfront with the balance paid after four years, when the dealer's warranty that the piece was authentic and legitimately acquired had expired.

As a precaution, Williams insisted that Symes store more than $9 million in art at the Getty as collateral.

The acquisition prompted an international furor. Italian officials launched a formal investigation into rumors that the statue had been illegally excavated in the Sicilian city of Morgantina. But the Italians could not find proof, and the controversy subsided.

Then in 2001, a Swiss resident was convicted in an Italian court of trafficking the Aphrodite, based in part on statements by local residents that the statue was illegally dug up in Morgantina three months before Symes offered it to True.

A court later overturned the conviction, ruling that the statute of limitations for the offense had expired. But Italian officials say the evidence of looting remains unchallenged. They are citing it in their request for the return of the Aphrodite.

'Something Too Dangerous for Us to Be Involved With'

In 1993, with the Getty's initial antiquities policy in place, True pursued another problematic acquisition: a gold Greek funerary wreath.

An explosion of thin gold leaves and blooms accented by inlaid colored glass, the piece is featured on the cover of the museum's 2002 antiquities handbook. The object is of Greek origin and not a part of the Italian case.

During their internal review, Getty attorneys found an Interpol cable in museum files indicating that the piece had been looted and another document in which True expressed misgivings about the wreath when it was first offered to the Getty in 1992.

During a trip to Switzerland that year, True arranged to view the wreath and meet its owner, identified as a Dr. Preis from Munich. But the man she met was an impostor, True wrote soon after, and the unnerved curator decided to wash her hands of the deal.

"I am afraid that in our case it is something that is too dangerous for us to be involved with," True wrote in June 1992 to art dealer Christoph F. Leon, the intermediary in the deal, in Basel, Switzerland.

Six months later, True apparently changed her mind. She asked to borrow the wreath from Leon for study, then won approval from the Getty board to purchase it for $1.15 million in 1993. The purchase agreement lists the source of the wreath as a "private collection, Switzerland."

In 1998, Interpol sent a query to the FBI, asking the agency to interview True about her relationship with Leon, among other things. Getty lawyers found the inquiry in museum files.

"It should be noted," the document states, "that subject Dr. Leon has previously come to the attention of our organization in regard to a Greek gold funerary wreath of illegal origin."

It could not be determined what, if anything, resulted from the Interpol inquiry.

Leon, contacted by phone, said he had known True "for a very long time" and confirmed that he was the "in-between man" on the sale of the wreath. He declined to comment further.

Getty Revises Its Antiquities Acquisitions Policy in 1995

In November 1995, the Getty unveiled a revised policy that appeared to raise the bar for the acquisition of antiquities.

The museum pledged to buy only antiquities that had been published in catalogs and scholarly journals before 1995 or were part of "established and well-documented" collections.

Eight months later, 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.

Known for its quality and variety, the collection included an abundance of rare objects, including statuettes and doorknockers dating as far back as 2600 BC.

Records show the Getty paid $20 million for 33 pieces, then received the rest as a donation valued at $40 million.

Most of the objects had no documented ownership history. Many had been acquired from Medici, Hecht and Symes. The acquisition appeared to violate the museum's policy requiring clear documentation. Responding to critics in the art world, the Getty insisted that its own publication and exhibition of the collection two years earlier had brought it in line with the policy.

Getty staffers were "well aware of the risks of acquiring a large number of largely unprovenanced antiquities," according to a memo written by Getty attorney Penny Cobey.

The review also turned up notes of a phone conversation about the Fleischman collection. The notes were made by Christine Steiner, then general counsel to the Getty Trust, summarizing a conversation with Gribbon, museum director at the time.

The notes include this cryptic exchange:

"How clean is this stuff?"

"Not very dirty."

Steiner, who left the Getty in 1999, declined to comment, as did Gribbon and Cobey.

In 1999, the museum sent three items, including a marble bust of an athlete, to Italy after an archeological publication identified it as coming from an excavation in Southern Italy.

Documents show that the Getty didn't seek restitution from the Fleischmans, as provided in its contract with the couple, but went to Symes, who had sold the bust to the Fleischmans. Symes agreed to compensate the museum with other artworks.

Based on the seized Polaroid photos, the Italians have identified 11 other objects from the Fleischman collection as having been looted and are seeking their return.

Barbara Fleischman, a Getty board member since 2000, denied that the museum had laundered objects through her and her late husband's collection and said they never thought the items they were buying could have been looted.

Provenance, she added, was "not an issue at the time."

"We were absolute innocents," she said. "We thought we were buying it from legitimate dealers. Looking back at it, maybe it was naive."

Symes' Guarantees About Statue Called 'Worthless'

In 2001, Italian prosecutor Paolo Ferri flew to California to question True under oath about the Getty's acquisitions and her dealings with Medici, Hecht and Symes.

Afterward, True sparked a debate among Getty attorneys and top officials when she drafted a proposal to acquire a Hellenic bronze statute of the sea god Poseidon. The Italians had long claimed the piece was looted.

The British Railway Pension Fund had bought the statue from Symes in 1976. A controversy erupted when it was exhibited two years later: A leading Italian scholar said it had been dredged from the Bay of Naples and smuggled out of the country.

Symes had told the British pension fund that he legally acquired the statue from a Greek woman who, with her late husband, had bought it in 1938 and kept it in Switzerland.

Getty attorneys learned that the woman was actually the aunt of Symes' former business partner and of such limited means that she probably never owned valuable art.

The discovery fueled worries that True's attempt to buy the controversial statue would provoke Italian authorities, who had already put the Getty on notice they were investigating Symes.

Italian authorities have interviewed Symes for a total of 24 hours about the antiquities trade, he acknowledged in a recent interview.

Cobey, the Getty's in-house attorney, argued that True faced "substantial risks ... by allowing herself to be associated with this acquisition, given the object's history and her own unresolved status with Prosecutor Ferri," records show.

She characterized Symes' guarantees about the statue's background as "worthless."

Cobey declined to comment. The Getty eventually abandoned the purchase.

"Even in the absence of absolute proof of theft," Cobey wrote in one e-mail, "when should a reasonable person see that the sirens are going off, the red lights flashing?"

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Safeguarding treasures

Timeline tracks reforms and legal developments in the world of antiquities.

1939: Italy passes a cultural patrimony law declaring all archeological artifacts to be government property unless the items were in private hands before 1902.

*

1970: A UNESCO convention calls for tighter international import-export restrictions on cultural property.

*

1977: Several art dealers are convicted of conspiring to sell stolen artifacts in the first American criminal case to recognize a foreign country's ownership of archeological items under U.S. law.

*

1979: Italy ratifies the UNESCO accord.

*

1983: Congress ratifies the UNESCO accord, committing the U.S. to greater import controls on antiquities.

*

1987: The Getty Museum announces its first antiquities acquisition policy, which relies on the guarantees of dealers and puts the burden on foreign governments to prove an artifact has been looted.

*

1995: In September, Swiss authorities raid Geneva warehouses, seizing thousands of illicit antiquities and photos of thousands more. Items shown in 42 of the photos were later identified by Italian police as being in the Getty's collection.

In November, the Getty announces a tougher acquisition policy that allows the museum to purchase only those antiquities held in private collections before 1995 or with written documentation.

*

1999: Getty antiquities curator Marion True testifies on Italy's behalf in favor of tighter U.S. imports of antiquities. The Getty returns three items to Italy after discovering they had been stolen or looted.

*

2000: Italian authorities notify the Getty that True is a target of their investigation into the looting of antiquities.

*

2001: The Getty's outside counsel advises Trust chief executive Barry Munitz not to give Italian authorities several "troublesome" documents that show True had close relationships with two art dealers, both of whom have since been named her co-defendants.

*

2005: True trial is to resume in Rome in November.

*

Source: Times reporting

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Italian authorities seek return of artifacts

J. Paul Getty Museum attorneys discovered that photos seized in a raid and posted as "looted items" on the Italian Carabinieri website (left) matched objects in the museum's antiquities collection (right). Italian authorities say a 1995 raid netted photos of 42 Getty objects, some then still encrusted with dirt, suggesting that they were photographed soon after they were unearthed.

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STATUE OF APOLLO: The Getty purchased this marble statue in 1985 from New York businessman Maurice Tempelsman for $2.9 million.

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KANTHAROS: Two-handled cup, or kantharos, was bought in 1985 from Fritz Burki, a Swiss restorer, for $200,000.

*

KRATER: Two-handled bowl, or krater, was part of the Fleischman Collection. The Getty bought it in 1996 for $185,000.

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Getty Had Signs It Was Acquiring Possibly Looted Art, Documents Show

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Attorneys for the J. Paul Getty Museum have determined that half the masterpieces in its antiquities collection were purchased from dealers now under investigation for allegedly selling artifacts looted from ruins in Italy. Italian authorities have identified dozens of objects in the Getty collection as looted, including ancient urns, vases and a 5-foot marble statue of Apollo.

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Shelly YH Feng - Jewellery

Lauren Green - Coins
Laura Stoffers - Decorative Arts
Yifei Zheng - Paintings
Emily Doherty - Sculpture

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Individual Skills

Video editing and Digitalisation

Creative Interpretation

Industry Knowledge

Creative Writing

History of Art Knowledge

Business and Marketing

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Getty Exhibition History: DUVEEN BROTHERS

‘Duveen Brothers’ kept cropping up when researching previous exhibitions held by the Getty; exhibitions included Chinese Porcelains, Dutch, English American, and Italian paintings.

The Duveen Brothers was a firm of influential art dealers based in London, Paris, and New York from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. With Joseph Duveen (1869-1939) at the helm and the assistance of art experts, most notably Bernard Berenson (1865-1959), Duveen Brothers played a prominent role in the transfer of old master paintings, antique furnishings, and objets d'art from Europe to the United States.

The online collection contains the manuscripts of the ‘documentation from the dealer’s library.

Not very interesting for our exhibition, but it may give a fascinating insight into how things got to the Getty (context of a British Arts dealership in the late 1800s).

How did they become in possession of Chinese porcelain and Italian art etc.?
How did they then interpret it?
Might we see the same type of power at play today?
Or did they positively impact ‘making art accessible to the public?
The centre also seems to use this history as a new interpretation starting point.

How does the Getty centre reflect on and interpret the Duveen Brothers' impact on Art collecting? They recently held a talk.

Tricks of the Trade: Duveen Brothers and the Market for the Decorative Arts, 1880–1940 - 5th May 2022
https://www.getty.edu/visit/cal/events/ev_3122.html

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Tricks of the Trade: Duveen Brothers and the Market for the Decorative Arts, 1880–1940 | Getty360 Calendar

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Attend In Person: Click on the “Get Tickets” button above to reserve.Watch Online: Sign up here to watch via ZoomDrawing from her publication, Duveen Brothers and the Market for Decorative Arts, 1880–1940 (2019), curator and professor Charlotte Vignon discusses the commercial strategies and the rela…

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The relationship (meaning) between museums and their objects.

We thought about Colonialism, Imperialism and European Enlightenment, but we decided to do an exhibition about collecting and collections.

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Reframing narrative

It doesn’t limit us to one period or era

Art objects with vandalism/protest on top REFRAMED in a new light

The vandalism/graffiti adds a new narrative to each object

Reframing, how have they interpreted the object?

Get people's reviews and thoughts on the exhibits

Use peoples tweets

Subject

Kris Graves's photographs of the heavily graffitied confederate the statue with projected portraits

Action

This exhibition explores the act of framing & re-framing objects  - who does this? Why?

(how the museum/us are interpreting the objects)

Consequence

Can we regain power through reframing something, eg. an object?

This is a reminder that the Getty Centre has interpreted the objects one way/from one perspective. Things can be reimagined differently.

https://www.getty.edu/news/photographing-americas-racist-monuments/

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This might be a good starting point to discover how objects from other places end up in Getty Centre. And there are few articles were talking about returning artworks to their origins.

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But like before it became a museum, the objects in the Getty Centre were collected by Paul Getty, which means the collections were collected based on his personal preference.

To think: is there any object that may be related to imperialism?

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There are many objects from European countries, mentioned by Emily.

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https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SNC

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Statue of Venus (the Mazarin Venus) (The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection)

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Statue of Venus (the Mazarin Venus) (Getty Museum); 2nd century A.D.; Unknown; Marble; 184 cm (72 7/16 in.); 54.AA.11

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https://ccsmgh.leeds.ac.uk/events/click-collect-an-online-exploration-of-collecting-at-the-museum-and-on-the-mantelpiece/

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Click & Collect is an online exhibition that explores 'collecting' - what do museums choose to collect or not? What do we collect and display in our own homes and why?

Curated by MA students at the University of Leeds, the exhibition re-contextualises items from the Getty Centre and asks you to share your own collections.

Artefacts in museums always have a 'past life' and story outside the museum space. This exhibition mirrors the eclecticism of collecting, asking what journey jewellery, coins, decorative arts, sculptures, and paintings have taken to arrive in the museum space. What stories do these artefacts have to tell?

A display of personal identity? A demonstration of wealth or knowledge? An emotional connection? A financial investment? Or something unidentifiable?

Visit the online exhibition to engage with the question; why do we collect? Join in the conversation and share your pictures and comments within the exhibition.

Visit the exhibition

Click & Collect is presented by MA students from the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies via WordPress. It is part of a wider series of exhibitions as part of an Interpretations course module.

Follow us on Instagram @collectinggetty

Image

Collage of the following adapted images from J.P Getty Centre online collection:

* - Object Number 71.DA.89* Statue of Venus (the Mazarin Venus) - Object number: xx
* L' Air design
Pendant Necklace - object number 77.AO.77.3
* Snake Bracelet - object number 84.AM.849
* Coin (tetradrachm) of Athens - object number 2015.5
* Tremissis of Constans II - object number 80.NH.2.132
* One Pair of Earrings - object number 82.AI.76.26.1
* Family Group in an Interior - object number 70.PA.20
* Still Life with Apples - object number 96.PA.8

* Basin with Deucalion and Pyrrha - Object Number: 86.DE.539
* Cabinet* Relief with Theater Masks - object number 2018.8

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Click & Collect: an online exploration of collecting at the museum and on the mantelpiece

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Curated by MA students at the University of Leeds, the exhibition re-contextualises items from the Getty Centre and asks you to share your own collections. Artefacts in museums always have a 'past life' and story outside the museum space.

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https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RKD

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Cabinet (The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection)

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JEWELLERY INTRO TEXT

When it comes to collecting items, clothing is not usually the first choice because it is not easy to keep and carry. However, decorative items that can be worn on the body are often chosen for collecting and commemorating.

Since ancient times, rare jewellery, precious metal accessories and watches have been popular among people and collectors, not only because they show one's taste and socio-economic status but also because they are heirlooms and commemorative. Hence, people are more willing to take the trouble to collect them.

We can determine the origin of these earrings and jewellery by the material, style, use, pattern, colour and content form, and the purpose of the jewellery, such as ritual or memorial, by the pattern and content form.

Why jewellery?
Before looking at Jewellery, I was looking for textile or clothing objects. Unfortunately, Getty doesn't have enough collections in that specific category. I did see a pair of shoes, but that's the only one that fits my expectations. I wanted to choose something unusual that people don't want and but them home on holiday.

JEWELLERY  MAIN OBJECT TEXT

This amber and gold foils and filigree bead necklace was recognized by the Getty Centre as an Italian-made amber artefact. Aquileia, an important port city in southern Italy, often had raw amber stones imported from the North Sea and the Baltic Sea at the time, and the necklace had a strong Mediterranean style and was popular at the time, as amber and gold beads were considered to be a great wedding proposal tool at the time.

Interesting Focus

The necklace was donated to the Getty Centre in 1977 by Gordon McLendon, whose father-in-law was a partner in the controversial oil company, leading us to wonder if the acquisition and donation of this object were related to the oil background of the Getty Centre's founder.

https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103WH

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Pendant Necklace (The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection)