Chasing Aphrodite

by Jason Felch

  Kovacevic and two Greek partners had shown up in Munich a year earlier with the banged-up wreath in a cardboard box, shopping it around like a secondhand hat. But rather than sell it through an established dealer, who would reap most of the profits, a friend suggested that they try going directly to the Getty. Kovacevic had sent the initial fax to True, inventing "Dr. Preis" as a cover story. The men had almost pulled the deal off but had blown it with their performance in the bank vault.

  Or so it seemed.

  Four months after turning down the wreath, True changed her mind. Perhaps it was the reduced price, down to $1.2 million, that caused her to reconsider. Or the fact that Leon, a dealer the Getty had done business with before, now presented himself as the sole owner of the piece. Whatever the motivation, True wrote to Leon saying that the Getty intended to go ahead with the purchase.

  A month later, the museum sent the standard inquiries to Greek and Italian authorities about the wreath. Both countries scrambled to stake a claim. Italian archaeologists concluded that the wreath was an important, unique object entirely unknown to scholars and almost certainly looted. Greek officials, meanwhile, informed the Getty that because no record of the funerary wreath existed, it was likely "the product of illicit excavations in Greece."

  Although the funerary wreath was obviously a recent find, neither country could provide any hard evidence about where or when it had been looted, and True proceeded with the acquisition. In June 1993, she presented her proposal to the board of trustees' acquisition committee, which had gathered in the museum's Founders Room. The room was dominated by an oil painting of J. Paul Getty—one of the museum's few reminders of its founder. True's report failed to mention her meeting with the unsavory characters in Zurich or the wreath's suspect history. The only hint of its origins came in this clinical assessment: "Virtually all surviving examples [of such wreaths] come from tombs."

  The following afternoon, the wreath was one of eighteen art objects, including a Michelangelo, that the full board voted unanimously to buy. In the museum's paperwork, Leon said that the wreath came from "a private Swiss collection." He left the box for "country of origin" blank. The Getty wired $1.2 million to a Swiss bank account in the names of Leon and the two Greeks.

  On the same day that the board voted to buy the wreath, Angelo Bottini, the archaeological director for Basilicata, the region in the arch of Italy's heel, sent a stern letter to True. "Do you have any idea how many archaeological sites have been plundered so that a single object can reach the market? How much scientific evidence we have lost? How many other objects have been destroyed?" he wrote. "Acquiring from the market is a crime against science and against the cultural and historic patrimony of another country."

  True replied defensively, "I have proposed publicly to your Ministry that we would agree to stop collecting (which is our legal right and privilege) if and when your country would be willing to lend us works of art for display long term. Our greatest hope is that someday the funds that now go for acquisition could be put to more constructive use conserving the monuments that so badly need them."

  True added that the Getty's new wreath had almost certainly come from northern Greece, where two similar wreaths were on exhibit at a local archaeological museum. Italy, she concluded, had no claim to it.

  Later, when Greek authorities demanded the wreath's return, True cited the Italian claim to argue that the wreath was almost certainly from Italy. The Italians had already investigated the wreath, she added, and found "nothing amiss."

  9. THE FLEISCHMAN COLLECTION

  ON OCTOBER 12, 1994, the Getty Museum inaugurated a stunning exhibit of ancient art. A Passion for Antiquities presented the collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, wealthy New Yorkers who had accumulated some of the finest Greek and Roman antiquities in private hands over a decade of aggressive collecting.

  The exhibit was a coup for Marion True, whose friendship with the couple had begun eight years earlier, while the curator was helping colleagues at other museums scout ancient bronze statues for a traveling exhibit called The Gods Delight. A close friend had suggested that True take a look at what the Fleischmans had acquired. The curator was skeptical—few private collections had museumquality pieces. But after visiting the couple's modernist apartment at United Nations Plaza, where the pieces were displayed in rooms featuring full-length windows overlooking the East River, True was impressed.

  It was the start of a close relationship, one of those art world entanglements that mixes business with pleasure, friendship with money, a shared passion for art with mutual back scratching. Like True, the Fleischmans came from modest origins. Larry was the son of Russian immigrants who operated a Detroit carpet distributorship. While serving as a GI in France during World War II, he developed an interest in art after a visit to the Roman ruins at Besançon, an ancient French city near the Swiss border. There he met a local doctor who invited him home to view his collection of artifacts, which were lovingly integrated into the décor. When Larry returned to Detroit, he and his new wife, Barbara, a onetime public school teacher and insurance company secretary, began collecting American paintings as a hobby. Larry quickly found that he had a natural eye for art, and buying paintings became a compulsion, consuming his time and much of his money. He sought out and befriended the artists whose work he acquired. Even when he grew rich as one of the original investors in Milwaukee's first color television station, he found himself in debt because of his art habit. Although Larry was the one constantly looking for new pieces, Barbara had the final say on every purchase.

  As the couple's holdings grew, so did their reputation within Detroit's social set. The Fleischmans were the first Jews to be listed in the blue book of exclusive Grosse Pointe. Larry befriended the director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, was appointed by the mayor to chair the institute's board, and spearheaded efforts to raise money for a new wing. In the early 1960s, Larry finally surrendered to the passion that had overtaken his life. The Fleischmans moved to New York City, center of the American art scene, and Larry bought an interest in the Kennedy Galleries, one of the country's oldest and most prestigious American art showrooms. He and Barbara threw their support behind the venerable Met, eventually underwriting a chair in American art and endowing two related galleries.

  They also mingled gingerly with the East Coast glitterati. Overweight, outgoing, and at times pushy to the point of obnoxiousness, Larry disliked the pretentiousness of the collecting crowd, particularly its tendency to favor the opinion of academics over self-taught connoisseurs such as himself. Art, he preached, should be accessible to everyone. For Barbara, the preferred art form was theater, which she had majored in at college. Though petite, she had a presence that could fill a room, and she was far more comfortable than Larry navigating Manhattan's elite social circles. Yet she retained the midwestern touch. When she threw one of her splendid parties, she refused to have it catered and instead made all the food herself.

  By 1982, when Larry became sole owner of the Kennedy Galleries, he stopped collecting American art to avoid any conflict of interest that might result from competing with his customers. But he couldn't shake the collecting bug. The Fleischmans began selling off their American art, reaping a windfall on Edward Hopper watercolors they had bought for $500 that were now going for one hundred times that amount. With the profits, they bought Greek and Roman antiquities. Larry haunted the Met's antiquities department for advice on acquisitions. He regularly picked the brain of assistant curator Maxwell "Max" Anderson and took stern advice from Anderson's boss, Dietrich von Bothmer. His buying power often exceeded that of the Met, a fact that allowed Larry to learn about pieces before either of the Met curators. He developed a direct line to Robert Hecht, whom Larry regarded as an archaeological genius and a mercurial character. He did most of his buying, however, from Robin Symes of London. The flashy high-end dealer represented exactly the kind of mean-spirited arrogance that Fleischman abhorred, but Symes consistently came up with
the best stuff. Like others, the Fleischmans came under the spell of the dazzling presentations Symes staged for preferred customers in his private studio. There he often unveiled his best merchandise by sweeping aside a velvet curtain to reveal a dramatically lit object mounted in the center of the showroom.

  As they had with American art, the Fleischmans bought only those antiquities that appealed to them personally. They favored artifacts related to everyday life—mirrors, bracelets, weights. They steered clear of objects that glorified war and chased other, more idiosyncratic pieces that reflected Barbara's love of the theater, such as pottery decorated with dramatic masks of Dionysus. All the items had to be small enough to fit in the custom-built alcoves of their Manhattan apartment. Larry doted endlessly on the collection, often getting up to dust or rearrange the pieces in the middle of the night when he was restless. By 1990, although concerns about the illicit antiquities trade were growing, the collection was so impressive that academics and curators from around the country regularly made pilgrimage to United Nations Plaza to study the Fleischmans' menagerie of small masterpieces.

  "Larry Fleischman has bought up nearly every great piece available recently," Princeton University Art Museum curator J. Michael Padgett wrote to one of True's deputies at the Getty. "I have to admire the way he has stretched himself to get the great things while he can."

  As for the provenance of his artifacts, Larry showed little interest in finding out where the things came from or how they arrived on the market. "Everything comes from somewhere," he would say with a shrug. His main criteria were whether the objects were authentic and beautiful. He did take some precautions: he never bought objects in Italy or Greece, and eventually he started making dealers sign a one-page form guaranteeing that they had been legally exported. But Larry, like most antiquities collectors, knew that if he dug much deeper, he might get into trouble.

  The Fleischmans' relationship with True and the Getty grew stronger in 1991 when the couple flew to Los Angeles to participate in a symposium on Greek marbles led by True. Larry left California impressed with the curator's poise and acumen. He knew that the Met was looking for a replacement for von Bothmer, who had retired from his curator position the year before. Fleischman supported Met director Philippe de Montebello's interest in hiring True as the new head of the Greek and Roman department. The Met's wooing of True sparked a bidding war that the Getty won when it promised the curator a raise, a trust-financed low-interest loan to buy a Santa Monica condo, and a future promotion.

  That same year, Fleischman turned to True for help with a personal problem. Despite outward appearances, he was hurting financially, having lost money in a bad gamble on petroleum stocks. An economic downturn was also dragging down his art business and real estate investments. He needed some quick cash, a sale that he considered a "surgical strike." He wanted to know whether True and the Getty would like to buy a collection of ancient jewelry and a group of eight second-century B.C. Hellenistic objects. His price was firm: $5.5 million.

  True urged her bosses to make the deal. "There is no question that each of these objects is of exceptional quality and importance," she wrote in an acquisition proposal to John Walsh. "Any one of these pieces would be a welcomed addition to the collection. The possibility to purchase all together is an extraordinary opportunity."

  She noted that moving so quickly would leave foreign governments little if any time to respond to the inquiries that the Getty's 1987 antiquities policy required. But that wasn't much of a concern, True told Walsh. Scholars from all over the world had studied the Fleischman collection. "I think it is unlikely that the inquiries should raise any problems," True said. The deal went through.

  From then on, when business brought True to New York, she often stayed with the couple free of charge. Accepting favors or gifts from someone with whom the Getty did business was expressly prohibited by the museum's conflict of interest policy. After all, the Getty was relying on True's unbiased judgment in matters such as its $5.5 million purchase from the Fleischmans. Yet the Fleischmans were also potential donors to the museum and close friends of True's. Indeed, they were fast becoming the worldly, sophisticated parents True never had. She often dropped their names in conversations with colleagues.

  True informed Walsh about her relationship with the couple. He encouraged it. Perhaps it might lead to something bigger for the museum.

  THERE WAS REASON to hope. Larry Fleischman hinted that he didn't expect to keep his antiquities forever. Collectors, he often said, were just stewards of artifacts for the next generation.

  From Los Angeles to London, curators had their eye on the Fleischman collection, but the assumption within the museum world was that the valuable objects adorning the couple's apartment were bound for the Met. Larry and Barbara had extended their largesse from American art to the museum's classics department, helping revive a dormant fundraising support group called the Philodoroi, which included Arthur Ochs "Punch" Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times. They had ponied up $1.5 million to help establish a position in von Bothmer's honor upon his retirement. And during the Met's exhibition of antiquities owned by Wall Street hedge fund manager Leon Levy and his socialite wife, Shelby White, the Fleischmans even underwrote the cost of a seminar for the event.

  In 1993, von Bothmer's recently appointed successor, Carlos Picón, quickly turned his attention to negotiating a temporary exhibit of the Fleischman collection. The show not only would give the museum a new draw for the public, but it also would give the Fleischmans a glimpse of the future, subtly demonstrating how the objects might someday look in Met display cases with donor cards bearing the couple's names. In addition, the show would yield a bonus for the collectors: an illustrated catalogue of their collection. The Fleischmans had grown weary of enthusiasts tromping through their apartment to ogle their art. An exhibit catalogue would be a handy way for Larry to let academics see what he owned without having to open his front door. It would also create the appearance of a legitimate provenance for a collection whose objects had no documented history.

  True was unaware of the Met's plans when she approached the couple about displaying their pieces at the Getty, but she was undaunted when she found out. She offered the Getty as cosponsor and the West Coast venue for the exhibit. Plans soon mushroomed to include the Cleveland Museum of Art and Boston's MFA. Six months into the planning, however, arrangements for the Met opening blew up. The dapper Picón called Larry Fleischman into his office to discuss a new wrinkle. Despite the beauty of the pieces, he said, the museum couldn't find a corporate sponsor willing to underwrite the exhibit. If the Fleischmans wanted the exhibit to go forward, they'd have to pay for staffing and advertising the event, as well as donate twelve of their best antiquities up-front.

  Fleischman was stunned. In business and art, he was renowned for being a fierce, even belligerent, negotiator. But once he made a deal, he always kept his word. In his view, Picón was trying to strong-arm him into paying for everything and then make a donation as well.

  "I can't afford to pay for all of this," he said, pointedly reminding Picón that he had already offered to pay for the inaugural dinner party and photography for the exhibit. "This is totally inappropriate. If we end up paying for all this, that makes it nothing more than a vanity exhibit."

  The spat was an embarrassment for the Met. One of the museum's biggest backers was now griping to others in the field. When MFA antiquities curator John Herrmann went to the Fleischmans' apartment to study the objects in anticipation of the show, Larry complained, "I have a wonderful collection, and I don't have to give a chunk of it away to get a good showing."

  Not long after the Met was eliminated from the lineup, the MFA pulled out. Museum director Alan Shestack vetoed the exhibit. He knew Larry as a crafty dealer, one who surely understood that a public exhibit would almost certainly increase the value of his pieces, which could then be sold off or donated for great personal gain. Shestack suspected that Fleischman had a business
deal up his sleeve.

  The stumble by the Met and withdrawal by the MFA opened the door wider for the Getty. True jumped through, promising that if the Getty was designated as lead institution, it would pay all the costs.

  ON OPENING NIGHT of the Fleischman exhibit in October 1994, more than two hundred VIPs assembled in the Getty's gardens before walking through galleries displaying nearly two hundred objects dating to the period 2600 B.C. to A.D. 400.

  Larry Fleischman was delighted with the catalogue—a 358-page hardcover volume printed on glossy paper and wrapped in an ocher jacket cover featuring one of the couple's favorite pieces, an Etruscan roof ornament depicting two satyrs. The catalogue was filled with large color photos and entries based on research conducted by Getty staff and Larry's part-time curator, Ariel Herrmann, former wife of the MFA's antiquities curator.

  True didn't stop there. Seizing on Barbara Fleischman's fondness for the theater, the Getty curator arranged for a number of Greek plays to be performed on a replica of an ancient Greek stage built in the museum's inner peristyle. Comedies by Menander and Plautus, along with musical compositions specifically written for the exhibit, were performed by actors wearing costumes modeled on Fleischman bronzes or vase paintings. True also arranged for a series of exhibitrelated lectures, including one given by Larry Fleischman on the subject of collecting. In a sometimes stumbling speech, Larry—who was known for his frequent mispronunciations and spoonerisms—led the audience through a slide presentation of his favorite pieces.

  More than 100,000 people came to the exhibit before it moved on to Cleveland. The reviews were glowing. On October 18, 1994, the Los Angeles Times declared it "hands down, the best thing of its kind we've seen in living memory" and the "sort of event the public should embrace and artniks revere." The Christian Science Monitor heaped praise on True's tasteful arrangement of the objects. Taking a cue from how they were displayed in the Fleischmans' apartment, True had placed them thematically throughout the Getty, rather than grouping them more traditionally by culture or era.