Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum by Jason Felch

Feb 04, 2012 Greenjasminetea rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-read-2012

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist. Antiquities fascinated me. Old stuff. Really, really old stuff fascinated me.

Then when I was 15, I went on a dig as a volunteer for a day and I gave up the dream. When I learned of how the British Museum acquired much of its antiquities collection, I lost some interest in the fascination.

As I read 'Chasing Aphrodite', I could understand how something like it happened. The focus is on the scandal at the J. Paul Getty Museum but it really could be...more When I was a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist. Antiquities fascinated me. Old stuff. Really, really old stuff fascinated me.

Then when I was 15, I went on a dig as a volunteer for a day and I gave up the dream. When I learned of how the British Museum acquired much of its antiquities collection, I lost some interest in the fascination.

As I read 'Chasing Aphrodite', I could understand how something like it happened. The focus is on the scandal at the J. Paul Getty Museum but it really could be the story of many museums with high profile antiquities exhibits.

But authors Felch and Frammolino did well to focus on Getty and the imbroglio with Italy over important Italian pieces in its collection that stemmed from the conviction of art dealer (or professional thief, depending on your PoV) Giaccomo Medici (what a great name, I must say).

When Polaroids of looting objects harvested by Medici are uncovered, they are matched with antiquity pieces in museums around the world. Some of the big ones? Found at Getty. What happens after that? Well, a whole lot if you run the Getty like the people who did.

Art is obviously a huge temptation for rich people. They really don't care how it was gotten, they just want it. That's basically what you learn from this book. It has always been like this and maybe it always will be.

But in this book, Felch and Frammolino do well to illustrate how the tides are changing, at least at the museum level and how museums acquire pieces. How the case came to be and how the pieces are returned is fascinating stuff as is the politics of those who work in this social elite world.

And it is a world of social elites and scholars.

Fascinating stuff. I'd feel sorry for museums but I once saw this film called The Art of the Steal and saw how shifty and opportunistic and outright ballsy some of these museums and their trustees can be and I really don't feel sorry at all.

"Chasing Aphrodite" is a solid book on the chase for the looted antiquity pieces of one museum but it also acts as metaphor for the shifty world of the art and antiquities collector.
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Jan 16, 2012 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

THis is one of those books that makes your jaw drop open after a few pages and remain there for the remainder of the book. It is a testimony to this book's attention-grabbing power that I read half of it during a nighttime transatlantic flight - hardly ideal reading circumstances.

The book describes in detail how museums, especially the Getty Museum in LA, bought antique Roman and Greek art under that type of "don't ask don't tell policy". That is, the curators acquiring the art assumed that, if...more THis is one of those books that makes your jaw drop open after a few pages and remain there for the remainder of the book. It is a testimony to this book's attention-grabbing power that I read half of it during a nighttime transatlantic flight - hardly ideal reading circumstances.

The book describes in detail how museums, especially the Getty Museum in LA, bought antique Roman and Greek art under that type of "don't ask don't tell policy". That is, the curators acquiring the art assumed that, if no evidence to the contrary was forthcoming, that the objects had been legitimately put on the market and that their documented provenance was correct. In reality, the majority of these pieces had been looted or otherwise illegally exported from Italy, Greece and Turkey. And most collectors and museum curators knew this perfectly well... but as long as they were able to pretend otherwise, they went on buying. It wasn't until Italy became serious about stopping the illegal trade in looted antiquities that American and European museums started to look at their galleries and archives with more attention.

That is the general background; the specific story is that of the Getty Museum. After JP Getty's death, this dusty tax write-off became, overnight, the world's richest museum. A frenzy of prestigious purchases followed, mostly initiated by a maverick Hungarian refugee. This same man also devised a tax fraud scheme whereby wealthy Hollywood residents would buy specific pieces of art at his recommendation, then donate them to the museum and enjoy a huge tax write-off based on fraudulent appraisals. Provenance paperwork was invented, forged or simply omitted. Murky alliances between the dealers, the collectors and the museum staff persisted for more than three decades. And once it became clear that many of the Italian dealers had ties with known looters, and even with the Mafia, there was little doubt that something had to change. Interestingly, the Getty curator who was most vocal about the need for reform, Marion True, had been implicated in some very questionable deals herself. She ended up being indicted by the Italian government, an almost unprecedented legal move. Her story seemed to be a classic "do as I say, not as I do" fable. Or was it a case of Freudian displacement, ie. she tried to prevent other people from committing the same misdeeds she had on her conscience? Either way, I found Marian True to be an enigmatic character, and the fact that she did not agree to be interviewed for this book, undoubtedly contributes to the contradiction.

The book also takes a look at the management of the Getty Museum, and the observations are appalling. The whole world of museum boards seems to operate on the "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" principle. There is gross abuse of funds, of privilege, of power. There is intimidation of lower-ranking officials, there is harassment of whistleblowers, forced resignations.... It all makes for a rollicking, if slightly salacious, read. Like a soap opera in the highest levels of society. Even Maurice Templesman, Jackie Kennedy's last companion, is somehow implicated as the buyer of ancient art of dubious legitimacy.

The bigger philosophical question remains : should art be stored and displayed for the public in the coutry of origin, or does every museum around the world have equal rights to a piece of the patrimony of humankind? I sympathise with the first view, but then I wonder : taken to its logical conclusion, does this philosophy mean that one would have to fly to Italy in order to see any great Roman art? That would make the study and appreciation of some of the most beautiful sculpture and pottery in the world the exclusive joy of a few privileged people.

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Oct 16, 2011 Katrina rated it 5 of 5 stars

Richly detailed and incredibly well written, Chasing Aphrodite is at once a white collar AND black market crime novel, a guide to ancient art, and a peek into the willfully blind and shortsighted day to day operations of the board of trustees, directors, and CEO of the second wealthiest endowment in the world. The resplendant works of sculpture and pottery form a background of timeless witness to the decade upon decade of human desire to posess them, and human ineptitude and weakness in protecti...more

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Sep 21, 2011 Jim O'Donnell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Any interest in a story that involves tax-evasion, Swiss bank accounts, imaginary archaeologists, the mafia, bribery, money-laundering, art thieves, reclusive billionaires, ethically challenged CEOs, obsessed police investigators, and the world’s most incredible archaeological treasures?

Pulitzer Prize finalists Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino offer up just that in Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum

This is the story of the Getty. Truth is stranger th...more

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Sep 03, 2011 Steven Buechler rated it 5 of 5 stars

A must read for anybody who visits museums. It shatters the belief that museums are noble places of study and learning.

-page 5-6
"For the Age of Piracy to tryly end, it took an international scandal of remarkable proportions. At the center of that scandal was the upstart J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. No institutio struggled with the morality of buying looted antiquities more deeply than the Getty. And in the end, none paid a higher price.
Over four decades, the Getty chased many illicit mas...more

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Jun 03, 2011 Tammy Dotts rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, nonfiction

The surprisingly hard-to-put-down Chasing Aphrodite traces how the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles built its impressive collection of classic artifacts along with its impressive reputation, only to see it crack in the wake of accusations of participating in an antiquities black market.

Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino build the book from their initial articles in the Los Angeles Times. The reports were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Journalism after the articles exposed the...more The surprisingly hard-to-put-down Chasing Aphrodite traces how the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles built its impressive collection of classic artifacts along with its impressive reputation, only to see it crack in the wake of accusations of participating in an antiquities black market.

Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino build the book from their initial articles in the Los Angeles Times. The reports were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Journalism after the articles exposed the Getty and other museums for their roles in questionable collecting.

From the beginning of the book, Felch and Frammolino make it clear this is not a dry look at museums. “The museum world’s dirty little secret came to light amid revelations about pedophile priests in the Catholic Church and widespread steroid use in Major League Baseball,” they write. Two scandals most of their readers would have been hard pressed not to notice in the news. News about the Getty and other museums may have not garnered attention among people outside the art world at first, but placed into context with two other scandals, the Getty scandal acquires a new relevancy for most people.

As Chasing Aphrodite follows various pieces of art from discovery and looting through to public unveilings at museum galas, the authors introduce a plethora of characters. Equal attention is given to ordinary fisherman who pull a bronze figure from the ocean to billionaire J. Paul Getty himself and on to the museum personnel and Italian police investigators. The characters are real people, and readers walk away with a sense of the conflicting ambitions of each.

Even passages about the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and changing international law about importing and acquisitioning antiquities that could, in other works, be skipped over to get back to the “good parts,” keep the reader’s interest.

The Aphrodite statue serves as the touchstone throughout the book. The statue is believed to have been looted from Sicily, and experts now question whether it depicts the goddess of love or, through the convoluted family ties of Greek and Roman mythology, her cousin Persephone. Spoiler alert for those who didn’t follow the original articles or ensuing publicity: the statue is now at the Aidone Archaeological Museum in Sicily.

Time and again, Felch and Frammolino return to the Aphrodite statue, using her journey to follow the trail of black and grey market dealers and the surprisingly high propensity for some museum officials to forge documents of origin and even personally smuggle artifacts into the United States.

The Italian investigation into the key players undoubtedly took a long time (the book covers years) and was likely repetitive and involved more paper shuffling than action. It’s to Chasing Aphrodite’s credit that the investigation seems lively. Scenes where the key investigators discover photographs and artifacts in a warehouse seem lifted from a movie. A brief mention that two investigators develop a personal relationship heightens the life imitating art atmosphere that permeates the book.

For someone not working in a museum, the descriptions of internal politics and power don’t seem real. Flaws that stand out in fiction as clichés – hubris, narcissism, greed – are real human traits. The jockeying for power at the Getty and need to improve the collection seem to bring out the best and worst of the people involved. Arguments for acquiring questionable artifacts may start off well-intentioned but are overwhelmed by the mounting arguments against. Even then, some museum officials persist in clinging to their old ways more fiercely than before while presenting a public front of protecting the countries of origin. Unlike fiction, villains of the piece aren’t as black and white. The authors make it easy to understand how the collecting process began and why it continued for so long.

Inevitably though, the Getty and other museums had to change their policies. As an Italian archaeological director writes 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? Acquiring from the market is a crime against science and against the cultural and historic patrimony of another country.” (less)

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May 31, 2011 Amanda Ferrell rated it 4 of 5 stars

I saw the Elgin Marbles when I was in the British Museum and felt a little guilty about it, since I had read about the continuing discussions between Greece and the Museum about rightful ownership. This book exposes the relationship between looters and museums and the black market middle men. It touches on the history of rich people, like Lord Elgin, carting off treasures from other countries, but is focused on the illegal trade in antiquities for private collectors and museums, and in particula...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Juliana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art

I read this book in anticipation of visiting the Getty Museum. I had a plane ride from Seattle to Southern California and I found this online at the Kindle store.

Before reading this I never really thought too much about how museum's obtain their collections. I mean I did realize that over the centuries this or that country had plundered another country's art--I had seen the Egyptian obelisks all over Europe. But I never really tho0ught about what goes on behind the scenes at American museums.

App...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Lynda rated it 4 of 5 stars

A well written journalistic styled book, Chasing Aphrodite does much to examine key US museums recent acquisition practices and sheds some not too pretty light on key institutions that should be above reproach.

If you do not know much about how ancient artifacts acquire value and are looted and trafficked this book is a good primer and a veritable who's who of the major players over the last thirty years.

As far as the Getty and the Italian prosecutions, much has been written and discussed, but...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Mhd rated it 5 of 5 stars

Wow! This is a great book. And, for non-fiction, it's quite a page-turner, too! If all non-fiction books were this well written and about investigation, I wouldn't need to read mysteries.

However, the subtitle is a bit misleading. It makes it sound as though there was a time when no one knew there were looted artifacts in the museum. The subtitle should be more like "The Hunt for Honesty" or "The Hunt for Someone Willing to go Public" or "Scandals in the Art and in the Boardroom at the World's R...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is an excellent book. The tale within of the downfall of the Getty Museum in California that was seduced by the illicit antiquities trade is an eye-opening tale to lay-persons such as myself who naively believed all antiquities in museums were there by honorable and sanctioned means. The book is well-written and engaging. My only complaint about the book is its ending. While former Getty curator Marion True was left to twist in the wind when the Italian government began prosecuting her for...more

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May 14, 2012 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts, crime, nonfiction

A solid, readable account of acquisitional greed and hubris by the top antiguities museums, especially the Getty, and the effort by investigators to stem the tide of looted artworks. Like drug addicts, many wealthy American museums turned a blind eye to provenance and abetted in the dirty dealings of lotters, middlemen and curators. An amazing amount of wealthy shenanigans to avoid paying taxes involved as well (one wonders just how much better off the US treasury would be if all loopholes were...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Leslee rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

A little known fact about this friendly neighborhood goodreads reviewer, I actually have a Classical Studies minor and originally thought that I might turn it into a major until I came to my senses and realized that I would be pouring money into a bottomless sinkhole if I was going to go for an english lit and classical studies double major, hahaha. I hate bugs too much to become the next Indiana Jones!

This book was interesting and the author did a good job in creating memorable characters for w...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Doug rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Never knew the art world was such shady business. The authors did a good job making a compelling story (I can see this book being incredibly boring in less capable hands) while touching on the nature of property and culture heritage. Are all antiquities excavated from Italy the property of the Italian government merely because of some law against the sale of antiquities passed under the fascist dictator Mussolini, or do they have some as-yet undefined right to own their history? Is humanity, or...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Amberlynne rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, history, true-crime, dc-library

First of all, if you love museums, especially museums in the U.S., do not read this book! It will only depress you. Most of this has been in the news at some point but I apparently never paid attention to it? It's fascinating, in a gross way, to get an inside view of the way museum curators built collections with looted items and justified it as being for the greater good. Their egotism that somehow their museums are the rightful places for the great art of other countries is just so gross to re...more

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Feb 04, 2012 CatBookMom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfic-general, free-publib-overdr, finished-2011

A feature article in the Sunday supplements of the Los Angeles Times led me to find and read this book. I found it fascinating and surprisingly difficult to put down; it reads like a big-heist thriller, somewhat akin to *Ocean's Eleven*. The lack of ethics among the purveyors and curators of antiquities is shocking, but so is the dollar value of the job benefits that the various museum and foundation directors and department heads received - private plane travel, luxurious housing, nearly-consta...more

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Dec 30, 2011 ellen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed, before-2012, nonfiction

Interesting and seemingly well-researched, although the notes weren't indicated within the text, which made referring to them somewhat inconvenient. The authors go into a good amount of depth without getting too judgmental, which I appreciated, but also without exonerating the curators, collectors, and dealers who were clearly engaged in some really shady dealings.

The writing style itself was engaging and accessible, although, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't appreciate the way the publishers ha...more

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Jun 16, 2011 Sherri aka SDMomChef rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: best-books-2011, worthy-non-fiction

I actually would rate this 4 1/2 stars. I love to visit art museums, but my interest is primarily with paintings. However, the topic of this book intrigued me: museums being involved with acquisitions of looted antiquities. I naively assumed that venerable art institutions would only purchase art, including antiquities, with established provenance.

This book focuses primarily on the Getty Museum's antiquities department from the time of its establishment through 2007. It was an eye opening read f...more

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Nov 26, 2011 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

Felch's book relates the story of the founding of the J. Paul Getty Museum.More imporatantly, it tells the story of how the Getty and other museums came into possession of many of the ancient, rare, and beautiful artifacts that they exhibit. In many cases, these objects were purchased from a party who bought them from individuals who loot ancient graves and dig in the countryside of nations like Italy, Sicily, and Turkey.

While this practice had been going on for years, in the 1970's and 1980's t...more

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Dec 24, 2011 Shaunee rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fascinating picture of what happens in the rarified atmosphere of the most prestigious art museums in the world or what did happen (?). Theft seems to have very little meaning to many art museum curators, collectors, and administrators. If I had any thoughts about where all these antiquities came from, Jason Felch, has disabused me of them. I now know they were ripped from ancient ruins and shipped to whatever buyer could fence them to the next highest bidder. I now sit and wonder if anything ha...more

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Jul 04, 2011 Bob Carroll rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art, art-theft, conspiracy-theories, non-fiction

I've been on an archaeological ethics kick lately. I just finished this book, "Chasing Aphrodite." Before that I read "Who Owns Antiquity?" by James Cuno, President and director of The Art Institute of Chicago. And before that, I read "Finders Keepers" by Craig Childs, a naturalist and desert environmentalist. They offer a point-counterpoint analysis of the complex issue of just what should we do with archaeological finds? Do they belong in a museum for all to see, an archaeologist's laboratory...more I've been on an archaeological ethics kick lately. I just finished this book, "Chasing Aphrodite." Before that I read "Who Owns Antiquity?" by James Cuno, President and director of The Art Institute of Chicago. And before that, I read "Finders Keepers" by Craig Childs, a naturalist and desert environmentalist. They offer a point-counterpoint analysis of the complex issue of just what should we do with archaeological finds? Do they belong in a museum for all to see, an archaeologist's laboratory for study or should they be left in situ in the field? Once removed, should they be returned to the country where they were found? Does it make a difference whether the artifact was found by a scientist or a looter? Does it matter whether the artifact was unearthed before or after 1970 (when the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage was adopted)?
Craig Childs ("Finders Keepers") is the most radical - if idealistic. His view is that archaeological materials should be left undisturbed, exactly where you find them ("in situ"). He relates how he got all bent out of shape because one of the people who was with him while he was exploring one of the canyons in the four corners area of the United States had pocketed some beads that he had found on a cave floor. Childs also removed some pottery from a museum display case once and put it back into the field. It is unclear how he might have known exactly where to place it.
He believes that even if you make an impeccable record of a "dig," verifying latitude, longitude and depth of the object and its relation with the surrounding objects, soils and flora, the act of removing the object from the ground destroys its context forever. He suggests that artifacts belong in the field, not in a museum, a university lab, a vast U.S. storage facility or private collection. While he worries about looters and spends quite a bit of time describing how damaging they are to the field, he makes no serious suggestion how to stop them. He is left to limply hope that they won't find and plunder the artifacts he (or others) found but left behind.
The author of "Who Owns Antiquity?" James Cuno, on the other hand, is an old-school apologist for the past acquisition policies of 'encyclopedic museums,' i.e., all-encompassing museums that have representative examples of the world’s (as opposed to national, regional or strictly local) artistic legacy. His thesis is two-fold: first, he takes a broad view. Antiquities belong to the whole world, not just the 'source nation.' "Antiquities are the cultural property of all humankind." Second, the UNESCO Convention and what he calls 'national retentionist laws" are both modern and political - and Cuno implies, benighted - constructs. These self-serving laws were enacted by modern day governments as a way to cement their power by creating a national identity and by raising the esteem of the country based on an ancient culture that by luck happened to be found within their current boundaries.
Cuno uses Egypt to show that there is no relationship between modern Egypt and Pharaonic Egypt (and thus its antiquities), and accordingly has no greater claim to those antiquities found within its borders. "The people of modern-day Cairo do not speak the language of the ancient Egyptians, do not practice their religion, do not make their art, wear their dress, eat their food, or play their music, and they do not adhere to the same kinds of laws or form of government the ancient Egyptians did. All that can be said is that they occupy the same (actually less) stretch of the Earth's geography."
He longs for the return to the good old days when partage - sharing archaeological finds between the excavating party and the host country - was the norm.
Cuno moves his lips, but no sound comes out, when he bemoans the looting of archaeological sites and the loss of the knowledge they contain. He does not however, acknowledge that museums have historically played any part in creating a market for looted antiquities, much less that they have been an integral part of the pipeline of 'hot' merchandise, thereby driving up the price and value of excavated goods.
In fact, he rationalizes the acquisition of looted antiquities by museums. "[I]n many respects, when faced with the choice whether or not to acquire an undocumented antiquity, the looting of the archaeological site has already occurred and the knowledge that may have been gained from the careful study of an antiquity's archaeological context has already been lost. Now the museum is faced with the choice of acquiring a work and bringing it into the public domain ... or not acquiring it." Museums have until recently opted for acquiring it.
Cuno suggests that the great encyclopedic museums had their origins in the age of Enlightenment with its spirit of curiosity and thirst for knowledge. That may be true, but he forgets to mention contributing factors, like war; colonization (and the first world’s attendant smug sense of moral and cultural superiority over the third world); and brutish sense of entitlement.
In war it is axiomatic that “to the victor goes the spoils.” How do you think the Rosetta Stone wound up sitting smack dab in the middle of the British Museum? The French, under Napoleon, discovered the stone when they invaded Egypt in 1799, and the British, in turn, took it from the French after they defeated them in 1801 (Treaty of Alexandria).
Around the same time, the Earl of Elgin, while serving as the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed almost 250 feet of a marble frieze along with about half of the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Why? Simply because he wanted them. He had them transported back to England. The “Elgin Marbles,” as they came to be called, also wound up in the British Museum in 1816, and there they remain today despite vehement demands for their return to Greece.
European exploration and colonization of Africa, Egypt, South America, Central America, China, India and Southeast Asia have resulted in similar systematic - or worse, haphazard - plunder of priceless and irreplaceable cultural artifacts and antiquities from the indigenous peoples all over the world.
Finally, there is “Finding Aphrodite,” which details how the Getty Museum in Los Angeles built its world class antiquities collection - they stole it fair and square with the assistance of looters and antiquities black marketeers - only to be forced to give much of it back to the governments of Italy and Greece. The hypocrisy is that, while the Getty was gobbling up some of the blackest of black market antiquities and paying top dollar for them, the chief antiquities curator of the Getty, Marion True (I’m not making that up), publicly espoused a reformist policy that all museums should immediately cease and desist from acquiring undocumented antiquities.
Of course, the curator’s dilemma is clear: he is under constant pressure to acquire (after all, that’s his job) ever more and greater antiquities that will enhance the stature of the museum not to mention his own, and yet by definition, antiquities are old and are in short supply. They rarely come on the legal market. If an acquisition cannot be made through legal channels, curators are drawn to the dark side. So, for decades the big museums (think Cuno’s encyclopedic museums) like New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum and, yes, the Getty, have augmented their collections, acquiring looted antiquities with phony provenances, by turning a greed-blinded eye to curatorial ethics, i.e. “curatorial avarice.” Like an addict looking for his next fix, curators seemingly didn’t care what low-lifes they had to deal with, where an artifact came from or what laws had to be broken to acquire it.
When confronted with a claim by a source country that an artifact had been looted from an archeological site, smuggled out of the country (sometimes in pieces) and sold to a museum through the black market, museums have historically used the same defense. They’ve stonewalled. Ignore all requests for information from a source country; deny everything; admit nothing. Recently though, source countries have become more sophisticated in tracing looted antiquities and more persistent in hounding museums to turn over their ill-gotten gains. Little by little the stone wall has cracked. Marion True of the Getty was even criminally charged in Italy for conspiring to traffic in looted art. The case led to the return of hundreds of illicit antiquities, not just from the Getty, but from dealers and private collectors as well.
Looting and antiquities have co-existed from the beginning of history. People have looted tombs, villages and other historical sites because there has always been a market for the loot. There’s money to be made in trafficking in looted antiquities. Taking museums out of the demand side of the supply-and-demand equation still leaves wealthy private collectors to contend with. Pieces acquired by collectors will not likely see the light of day unless the tax collector comes calling. So, none of the authors have satisfactorily answered the central question of how to stop looting from occurring in the first place. Maybe it will take evolution another millennium to find an answer. In the meantime, the next time we go to a museum, look closely at the gleaming artifact and see if you can’t see a bit of tarnish.(less)

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Apr 11, 2011 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: popular-science, art-history

This book focuses on the infighting and shady dealing of the Getty Museum in looted antiquities, mainly from Greece and Italy. But it also exposes the problem museums and private collectors generally create by supporting what, at least until recently, was a very poorly regulated area. Because museums and other collectors would pay almost any amount for the right statues, pottery etc. a huge market created an incentive to loot tombs, archaelogical sites, anyplace the material could be dug up. Thu...more

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Nov 16, 2011 Claire Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fast-paced, grown-up, nonfiction

The final third of this book stressed me out so much that I was certain any minor rule-breaking I've done at work was going to come back and haunt me.

The story was fascinating, detailed, and engagingly written. What most struck me, though, was the incestuous tightness of the elite world of CSU and UC presidents, museum trustees, board members, major corporation heads, etc. Those revelations (to me, anyway) bothered me even more than the moral questions that came up around looted antiquities.

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Jul 26, 2012 Lindsay rated it 3 of 5 stars

Very interesting book about the Getty Museum and the looting of antiquities all over the world. Individuals were subsequently charged with crimes by the italian government and many, many museum pieces were returned to Italy. Many museums also followed suit. Interesting story. Interesting investigation by the Italians. Little too long a story for me. I got bored 2/3 the way through.

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Apr 10, 2012 Lana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Two LA Times reporters bust The Getty Museum (and others) for purchasing antiquities on the black market. This. Must. Be. A. Movie. Someday.

Priceless!

(Full disclosure, I represented the president of Italy's Marche Region regarding one of the disputed works detailed in this book. The Victorious Youth. Still under debate where it will call home for eternity. For now, it resides at the Getty Villa in Malibu.)

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Apr 09, 2012 Shirley Brown rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was surprised how good this book was. Perry read it first on a recommendation from our daughter's mother-in-law. It was so good that I would recommend it to anyone. There's excitement, intrique and mystrey. And it's characters get no sympathy from the reader. The authors are two reporters for the Los Angeles Times, and they have aptly done their research and verified the facts. Hard to put down.

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Nov 13, 2011 Kim Sheehan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Very, very interesting story about the relationship between museums, countries like Italy and Greece, shady antiques dealers and people who steal antiquities. There's a focus on the hijinks at the Getty Museum in LA but interesting information for anyone interested in the museum business.

A little bogged down in detail, and a little hard to keep all the people straight, but interesting nonetheless.

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Aug 18, 2011 Andrea rated it 3 of 5 stars

A rather damning look at the museum world and it's interface with greed and corruption that reaches into business, government and law. Rather depressing as it reveals the moral relativism that abounds. Though very thorough and detailed it may be missing something of the passion for art, history and preservation that may make some of the main characters susceptible to ethical and moral ambivalence.

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May 17, 2013 Bhan13 rated it 3 of 5 stars

Written in the typically plain style of most books written by journalists (in my experience that means some repetition and not quite enough technical bits), it's thorough, I would only wish for more photos. (I almost always want more than a book includes but this is about artwork after all.) It's thought-provoking about the ethics of collecting and what belongs to whom but remains neutral.

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Sep 01, 2012 Kimiamqa rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. I don't remember reading or hearing about the scandal of the J. Paul Getty Museum, so the unfolding narrative was new to me and kept my attention throughout. The journalists/authors did a good job of building the "characters", or in this case real players. I love good narrative non-fiction so I recommend this read!

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title link	preview: Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum
avg rating	preview: Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum Goodreads rating: 3.91 (334 ratings)
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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9465604-chasing-aphrodite?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348282863l/9465604.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9465604-chasing-aphrodite?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum by Jason Felch[/url]

Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum

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