Chasing Aphrodite (44 page)

15
 "The beauty one can find":
J. Paul Getty,
As I See It
(Getty, 2003).

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 Getty had begun collecting:
Getty's collecting is based on interviews with Garrett and Fredericksen and Getty's own accounts in
As I See It
and
Collector's Choice: The Chronicle of an Artistic Odyssey Through Europe
(W. H. Allen, 1955), a book Getty coauthored with Ethel Le Vane. See also the Getty Museum's 2009 exhibition catalogue
Collector's Choice: J. Paul Getty and His Antiquities.
"
The habitual narcotics user":
Getty,
As I See It.

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 "
To me my works":
Le Vane and Getty,
Collector's Choice.
In a novella:
J. Paul Getty,
A Journey from Corinth
(Privately printed, 1955). The original manuscript is in the Nethercutt Collection in Sylmar, California. According to a note in the Getty Research Institute archives, "The manuscript appears to have been prepared by a copy editor and later appears as a chapter in
Collector's Choice.
"
Arriving at Sutton Place:
Based on accounts of life at Sutton Place in Getty biographies.
his hands shook:
Based on reports of Getty's health at the time.

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 Just as Getty was learning:
The Met's pursuit of the bronze and Getty's legal concerns are detailed in interviews with Thomas Hoving and confidential Met documents, including Dietrich von Bothmer's June 1973 acquisition report to the board of trustees; a memo from von Bothmer to Hoving dated January 1973; Hoving's June 1973 letter to Getty detailing the collector's legal concerns about the bronze; and correspondence between Hoving and Artemis officials. See also Hoving,
Making the Mummies Dance,
366.
some eight times:
Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE), podcast, February 20, 2006.
the
New York Times
began:
The series opened with an investigation by Nicholas Gage on February 18, 1973, and continued into early 1974.

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Hoving decided to propose:
Met documents and interviews with Hoving.

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a tax shelter:
This account is based on documents in the Getty Trust archives. Marion True described Getty's motives in her introduction to
The Getty Villa
(Getty, 2005): "Making the collection available to the public would bring with it certain tax benefits that appealed to the wealthy but thrifty collector." (See "admission" note below.)

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 The small museum opened:
True,
Getty Villa;
interviews with Garrett and Fredericksen; Getty Trust archives.
No admission was charged:
At one point, Getty suggested charging admission but was advised against it by Bramlett. "While they would have no right to do so, people like Ralph Nader and Congressman [John] Patman could have a field day out of the J. Paul Getty Museum making an admission charge and I feel it would cause considerable ill-will and bad publicity towards you personally," Bramlett wrote Getty in a September 25, 1973, letter. "This is because you personally have been allowed under the tax law huge deductions in computing taxable income because of your personal contributions to your Foundation. This means that the funds in the Museum are quasi-public funds because presumably the public at large has paid more taxes so that you could enjoy the tax saving. If the public must now pay to see the Museum, they could very well feel this is an imposition." Getty took Bramlett's advice and insisted that his museum be "free of all charges—be they admission or even for parking automobiles" (Getty,
As I See It,
279). Admission to the museum is still free today, but it costs $15 to park in the garage.

22 
Garrett was skeptical:
Interviews with Garrett.
"
It will be a re-creation":
Interviews with Garrett.
the billionaire micromanaged:
Interviews with Garrett; Getty Trust archives.

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 the new Getty Museum:
Among the antiquities dealers who attended the opening were Robin Symes and Heinz Herzer. Getty never saw the museum that bore his name. After he left the United States in June 1951, he never returned, in part because of his fear of flying.

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beg and plead:
Interviews with Garrett and Fredericksen; Getty Trust archives.
the ninth codicil:
According to Getty's will, press accounts, and copies of the Getty's federal tax forms, especially for 1977, Getty's gift amounted to sixty-four acres of property in Pacific Palisades (although the location is always referred to as Malibu, which is just a few blocks away) worth $3.1 million; the ranch house; Getty's $3.6 million art collection; $17 million in cash; and four million shares of Getty Oil stock worth $662 million. The will's twenty-first codicil—added by Getty shortly before his death, with Bramlett as the only witness—took control of the museum's share of the estate out of his family's hands and gave it to the museum's six-member board of trustees.

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to avoid paying California taxes:
According to records in the Getty Trust archives and an interview with former
Los Angeles Times
art critic William Wilson, the Getty frequently lent new acquisitions to out-of-state museums to avoid paying California's sales and use tax on foreign works of art.

2: A P
ERFECT
S
CHEME

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Among those:
Biographical details about Jiri Frel are from the Getty Trust archives and interviews with Stephen Garrett, Burton Fredericksen, Thomas Hoving, George Goldner, Selma Holo (director of the International Museum Institute and USC Fisher Museum of Art), Bruce McNall, William Wilson, Jerry Eisenberg, and Frel's ex-wife, Faya Causey.

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once revealed:
Declassified FBI documents. Frel said that he had tried to join the Communist Party as a career move but was rejected because of his "independent political philosophy." He added that the Communist regime had permitted him to travel extensively for academic reasons but had made him fill out lengthy forms listing the names of his contacts and information about them—information that he suspected was reviewed by the Czechoslovak intelligence service.

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"
fucking American morons":
This quote and the preceding descriptions of Harold Berg are from interviews with Thomas Hoving.
in Wiener's name:
Interview with Malcolm Wiener.

30
twenty-five-year-old coin dealer:
Biographical details about McNall are from public records; interviews with McNall, Hoving, Arthur Houghion, and Robert Hecht; and McNall's autobiography,
Fun While It Lasted: My Rise and Fall in the Land of Fame and Fortune
(Hyperion, 2003). McNall is known for his boyish enthusiasm and ever-changing stories about himself. A dropout from a Ph.D. program in classics at UCLA, he told people he had attended Oxford. In truth, he had just driven through the university. He told Hecht that he had once worked with a local plastic surgeon helping perform face-lifts. According to a former colleague, McNall also claimed to have been a surgeon in a burn unit before an especially sad case of a burned girl prompted him to turn to coins. When the colleague pointed out that McNall was far too young to have graduated from medical school, the dealer claimed that he had been in an accelerated program. "It was easy," he quipped. McNall, who later acquired a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Kings hockey team, was convicted in December 1996 of defrauding his own franchise, a securities firm, and six banks of $236 million. He was sentenced to seventy months in prison and ordered to pay $5 million in restitution to the banks. He was released from prison for good behavior in 2001 after serving nearly five years.
McNall's supplier:
Biographical details about Hecht are from interviews with Hecht, McNall, Hoving, and Giacomo Medici; Marion True, deposition before Paolo Ferri and Guglielmo Muntoni, Los Angeles, June 20–21, 2001 (hereafter "True's 2001 deposition"); Frieda Tchakos, deposition before Paolo Ferri, Limassol, Cyprus, February 19, 2002 (hereafter "Tchakos's 2002 deposition"); Robin Symes, deposition before Paolo Ferri, Rome, March 28, 2003 (hereafter "Symes's 2003 deposition"); and Hecht's unpublished memoir, which was seized by Italian authorities.

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 to back up values:
In the authors' interview with Jerry Eisenberg, he said, "I did a few appraisals but never took any commission from Frel. I remember he wanted to get as much as he could. I wouldn't put my signature on it unless I could defend it."

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 The value of the gifts:
According to Hecht's memoir, in which he recounts discussing the dollar amounts with Weintraub: "Later, Sy remarked to me that he only purchased antiquities to make donations and that it was not worth his trouble if he could not multiply his cost by 5X for the donation."
the donation scheme:
Interviews with McNall; Arthur Houghton's contemporaneous notes (hereafter "Houghton's notes"); confidential Getty records of its internal investigation into the donation scheme. All the donors, with the appraised values of their donations, are listed in the trust's tax returns. Most donated objects were published in the
J. Paul Getty Museum Journal,
the museum's annual catalogue of acquisitions. Actual values paid for the objects come from internal Getty records or Houghton's notes. Jane Cody, McNall's former wife, said that she knew nothing about $293,000 worth of antiquities listed as gifts in her name. Faya Causey would not comment on donations from her and her family. Sy Weintraub died in 2000. Gordon McLendon died in 1986. In an e-mail to the authors, attorney Ken Ziffren said, "My partner, Skip Brittenham, and I recall that Bruce McNall, then a client of our firm, asked if we would purchase some Greek art and donate it to the Getty Museum. We agreed to do so and believe we ultimately purchased the art and donated it on the basis of the actual cash purchase price each of us paid for the art. We became aware sometime later that other individuals may have donated art on the basis of large appraisals of fair market value. Neither of us recall any contact with Mr. Frel." In a subsequent e-mail, Ziffren corrected that statement, saying that a review of his records showed that neither he nor Brittenham had actually purchased any objects or claimed any tax deductions. Ziffren and Brittenham refused to elaborate, citing attorney-client privilege. Lily Tomlin, contacted through a representative, declined to comment. William Herbert Hunt, speaking on his brother Nelson Bunker's behalf, said that they had done business with McNall and met Frel but that he did not specifically recall buying any objects on display at the Getty. In the authors' interview with Alan Salke, he confirmed that the government took him to court over the appraised value supplied by Frel for his donation to the Getty. Salke said that he ended up settling for a value of $75,000 and paid $35,000 in back taxes. Richard Sandler, an attorney for the Milkens, said that Lowell never donated anything to the Getty. Michael did, Sandler said, but only after he had an independent appraiser set the value for tax purposes, which the IRS did not contest. The authors could not reach Stanley Silverman for comment.

36
He built a swimming pool:
Interviews with McNall and Eisenberg.
a shiny BMW:
Interview with Goldner. Vasek Polak died in 1997.
one of the largest:
Tax fraud has been a recurring problem in American museums, but few cases have been as systematic as the Getty's decadelong scheme. In 1982, two undercover IRS agents made donations of overvalued Egyptian artifacts to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. LACMA officials accepted the objects with inflated values and signed backdated donation forms for the agents. LACMA officials later said that this was "an honest mistake" and promised to change their procedures. But in 2008, LACMA was among several southern California museums raided by federal agents investigating a tax fraud scheme involving the donation of inflated Southeast Asian artifacts. To date, no museum official has been charged with a crime. The Smithsonian Institution also has been accused of repeat offenses. In 1983, the IRS found that gems donated to the Smithsonian had been appraised at five times their true value. The museum pledged to tighten its procedures. In 1997, a New Jersey businessman donated four Stradivarius instruments with a claimed value of $55 million to the National Museum of American History, making it one of the largest gifts ever to a Smithsonian museum. Records later provided to Congress showed that museum officials had valued the instruments for insurance purposes at just $5 million. The donor was later convicted of an unrelated tax fraud.
More than a hundred:
These figures and the broader tax fraud were first exposed by Thomas Hoving and Geraldine Norman, "Huge Tax Fraud Uncovered at Getty Museum,"
Times
(London), February 13, 1987. The authors independently confirmed the donation amounts with Getty tax records and confidential Getty records of its internal investigation.
Others viewed the donations:
Interviews with Eisenberg and Fredericksen; Houghton's notes.

3: T
OO
M
ORAL

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the Getty would be required:
As a private operating foundation, the Getty is obligated to spend 4.25 percent of its endowment every year on activities that benefit the public. With $1.2 billion in assets in 1981, that amounted to $51 million in required spending.

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Williams laid out:
This account of the Getty Trust's conception is drawn largely from interviews with Harold Williams and from the trust's archives, which include the original proposal from Otto Wittmann and other key documents. The Getty's unusual structure—having a museum director who reported to the CEO of the trust—would prove to be a fateful choice, as successive generations clashed over their respective roles.

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Arthur Houghton III:
Biographical details about Houghton are from Houghton's résumé, public records, and interviews with former Getty officials. Given his unusual background, many suspected that Houghton had been—or perhaps still was—an employee of the CIA. Houghton did little to dispel the rumor, and the story grew into a tall tale about the agency having dispatched Houghton to the Getty to keep an eye on Frel, a suspected Communist spy. Neither was true. Houghton had worked briefly in the State Department's bureau of intelligence and had close friends at the CIA, but he was never a spy.
He began collecting:
Much of this chapter is taken from confidential Getty records and hundreds of pages of detailed notes that Houghton kept of his activities in the Getty's antiquities department. Thanks to his State Department training, Houghton's remarkable diary of his daily life often recounts verbatim conversations and detailed descriptions of meetings and events. Confidential Getty records, including attorney Bruce Bevan's investigation of Houghton's allegations against Frel, and interviews with several former Getty officials, including Williams and John Walsh, confirmed and expanded on these events.