Bloodless waters

"Italy will drop its civil charges against former J. Paul Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True, now on trial here for allegedly trafficking in looted art, Italian authorities announced Tuesday."

Will this news make it to the frenzied "guilty upon arrival on all counts" art blogs of the scribes who stake their electronic arts presence by being judges and jurors for unresolved museum scandals?

Let us see.

This is not to say that there was no blood in the water to start with... and some of the high-handed folks who sometimes run major museums do need accounting and someone nipping at their butt to keep them straight.

The returns effectively render moot the civil aspect of True's trial, in which Italy sought damages for the loss of its cultural property. True faces criminal charges along with American antiquities dealer Robert Hecht, 88.

"The withdrawal significantly lowers True's exposure," said Luis Li, a Getty legal advisor. The Getty is paying for True's defense.

Paolo Ferri, the Italian criminal prosecutor in the case, said he hoped the agreement would accelerate the pace of the trial, which began in July 2005 and has hearings about once a month, when not delayed by strikes or holidays.

Ferri said the criminal trial, the first in which an American curator has been charged by a foreign county, was intended to be both punitive and preventive. "The preventive aspect was to say to museums: Please stop this buying in an illicit fashion, and please return the objects," Ferri said in an interview Tuesday. "This has now been achieved, and museums that are obliged to surrender objects won't be in the same trouble."

He expressed confidence in winning a guilty verdict in the conspiracy case but called its significance "virtual."

"True is an American citizen and will be able to evade my penal sanctions by going to the U.S. With Hecht, he is too old to have a real prison term," he said.

"For me, the trial has been won," he concluded.

True has maintained her innocence throughout the proceedings. Harry Stang, True's attorney, said, "Dr. True, together with her defense team, will continue to pursue all steps necessary to establish her innocence of the charges. Her defense team will address further matters when and if appropriate."

But every lawsuit has two sides, and it's easy to achieve shock presence with big bites when the museum's blood is in the water and the big sharks are biting and the small pilot fish also wants to bite.

With all this attention on the issue, perhaps a closer look at Italian museums' holdings is warranted.

As I wrote last year: "does every Roman artifact in museums around the world have to be returned to Italy? And do Italian museums have to return Roman antiquities that were made in other parts of the Roman Empire to the nations that now exist there? And Italy better start packing the 13 Egyptian obelisks that are all over Rome: Cairo is clearing out some spaces for them."

Two sides to every story.