Jean Paul Getty Museum

The Jean Paul Getty Museum (J. Paul Getty Museum), often known as the Getty, has two sites in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. Jean Paul Getty is the company's founder. In 2016, the Getty Museum received two million visitors. The museum displays textiles, clocks, and other items dating from the Middle Ages to the present. This museum's Getty Villa complex houses two thousand year old sculptures from Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and Ancient Eritrea.

History

J. Paul Getty constructed a museum in a replica of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum on his Malibu, California, property in 1974. When it inherited US$1.2 billion in 1982, the museum became the richest in the world. Following an economic downturn in what was then West Germany, the Getty Museum acquired 144 illuminated mediaeval manuscripts from the financially struggling Ludwig Collection in Aachen in 1983; The New York Times' John Russell described the collection as "one of the finest holdings of its kind ever assembled, it is quite certainly the most important that was in private hands." The museum relocated to its current location in Los Angeles' Brentwood area in 1997; the Malibu museum, called the "Getty Villa," remained open.

Visitors may learn about exhibitions using the GettyGuide array of interactive multimedia resources. The GettyGuide multimedia player within the museum includes comments from curators and conservators on numerous pieces of art. In the 1970s and 1980s, the curator, Ji Frel, devised a tax evasion plan to grow the museum's antiquities collection, basically purchasing objects of dubious origin as well as a number of artefacts widely regarded fakes, such as the Getty kouros. Frel was demoted in 1984 and resigned in 1986. The Getty is embroiled in a dispute about the legitimate title to some of the artwork in its collection. Marion True, the museum's former antiquities curator (hired by Frel), was charged in Italy in 2005 (together with legendary dealer Robert E. Hecht).

Marion True, the museum's previous antiquities curator (hired by Frel), was charged with trafficking in stolen antiquities in Italy in 2005 (together with noted dealer Robert E. Hecht). The Greek authorities have handled similar allegations. The key evidence in the case came from a 1995 raid on a warehouse in Geneva, Switzerland, which held a wealth in stolen antiquities. Giacomo Medici, an Italian art dealer, was arrested in 1997; his operation was described as "one of the world's largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and passing them on to the most elite end of the international art market." True was compelled to resign in 2005.

True asserted in a letter to the J. Paul Getty Trust on December 18, 2006, that she was being compelled to "bear the load" for actions that the Getty's board of directors knew about, approved of, and endorsed. True is presently being investigated by Greek police for unlawfully excavating and smuggling a 2,500-year-old burial wreath out of the country. The wreath and a 6th-century BC kore figure have been repatriated to Greece and are now on display at the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki. A 2,400-year-old black limestone stele as well as a marble votive relief from around 490 BC were also retrieved. Michael Brand, the museum's director, declared on November 20, 2006, that 26 disputed items had been returned.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles was obliged to return 40 antiquities in 2007, including a 5th-century BC statue of the goddess Aphrodite taken from Morgantina, an ancient Greek village in Sicily. For over two decades, the Getty Museum opposed the Italian government's pleas, only to subsequently accept that "there could be 'issues'" with the acquisition. "The discussions haven't made a single step forward," remarked Italian senior cultural official Giuseppe Proietti in 2006. The J. Paul Getty Museum returned the antiques only after he urged that the Italian government "apply cultural penalties on the Getty, stopping all cultural cooperation."

In another separate instance, the Getty Museum was forced to return three antiques to Italy in 1999 after concluding. The objects included a Greek red-figure kylix from the 5th-century BC, signed by the painter Onesimos and the potter Euphronios as potter, looted from the Etruscan site of Cerveteri; a torso of the god Mithra from the 2nd-century AD, and the head of a youth by the Greek sculptor Polykleitos.

In 2016, the terracotta head of the Greek god Hades was returned to Sicily (Italy). The archaeological artifact was looted from Morgantina in the 1970s. The Getty museum purchased the terracotta head of Hades in 1985 from the New York collector Maurice Tempelsman, who had purchased it from the London dealer Robin Symes. Getty records show the museum paid $530,000 for it.[19][20] On December 21, 2016, the head of Hades was added to the collection of the archaeological museum of Aidone, where it joined the statue of Demeter, the mother of his consort Persephone. Sicilian archaeologists found a blue curl that was missing from Hades' beard, and so it proved the origin of the terracotta head.