Marion True, who resigned last month as the antiquities curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, amid accusations that she failed to disclose details about the purchase of a vacation home in Greece, received a loan for that home from a wealthy art patron whose collection the Getty had just bought, according to a report in The Los Angeles Times. Ms. True, who is on trial in Rome on charges of conspiring to import illegally excavated antiquities for the Getty's collection, received the $400,000 loan from Lawrence Fleischman in 1996, three days after the Getty paid $20 million to acquire part of a renowned collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities owned by Mr. Fleischman and his wife, Barbara, the newspaper reported, citing loan documents and interviews. The couple gave the rest of the collection, valued at much more than $20 million, to the museum. The loan from Mr. Fleischman was used to repay money Ms. True had borrowed in 1995 in an original loan for the house, according to the article. When Ms. True stepped down in October, the Getty said only that she "failed to report certain aspects of her Greek house purchase transaction in violation of Getty policy." Ms. True's lawyer, Harry Stang, said yesterday that any implication that the loan from the collectors had any bearing on the sale and gift of their collection was false, adding that Ms. True's involvement in negotiations for the collection ended long before the loan offer was made. Ms. Fleischman, whose husband died in 1997 and who joined the Getty's board in 2000, said in an interview yesterday that she was aware of the loan but did not report it to the board because she did not believe it presented an ethical conflict. "Looking back is very easy," she said. "At the time, I was, well, call it naïve or inexperienced." She added, "I do stand corrected, but I don't stand condemned."
Posted by david meadows on Nov-18-05 at 4:36 AM
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