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The head of the US Getty Museum held talks Friday in Italy over allegedly looted antiquities in its collection a day before the reopening of its original home, officials said.
Getty Museum director Michael Brand met Italian culture officials in Rome who are demanding the return of more than 30 disputed items in the museum's famed collection, the museum said from its base in Los Angeles.
The Getty Villa, the museum's original home that has been shut for nine year 275-million-dollar renovation, was to reopen Saturday to show off one of America's best antiquities collections.
"Getty chiefs met Italian officials "to discuss matters of mutual interest including issues associated with a number of objects in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum," the museum said in a statement.
"The talks were frank and productive and are on-going. The parties have agreed to further meetings in the near future to move the process forward," it added.
Australian-born Brand, who took over the running of the museum this month, led a five-strong team to Rome for meetings that the museum sees as "the onset of a dialogue," the Los Angeles Times reported.
Italy last year demanded that the museum, one of the richest in the world, set up by US oil billionaire and collector J. Paul Getty, return around three dozen items it said were acquired illegally.
The Getty insists it never knowingly bought illegally uncovered artefacts and is paying for the defence of its former antiquities curator, Marion True, who is standing trial in Rome for conspiring to traffic in stolen antiquities.
True and co-defendant Robert Hecht, a prominent art dealer in his eighties, both deny wrongdoing in the case, which emerged out of an investigation into the activities of a former gallery owner Giacomo Medici, who is currently appealing a 10-year jail sentence in Italy.
The trial is seen as an important test-case for the art world, with Italian prosecutors signalling their intention to challenge museums worldwide over the means through which they acquired many of their artworks.
Greece in October confirmed that it too had asked the Getty to return a number of ancient art objects which it believes were stolen and smuggled illegally out of the country.
The crisis at the Getty deepened on Wednesday, when trustee Barbara Fleischman resigned her post.
Many of the pieces disputed by Italy were part of a 1996 donation and sale by Fleischman and her late husband, Lawrence, to the Getty, according to the Los Angeles Times, which has carried out special investigations in the case.
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AFPLifestyle-US-Italy-art-Getty
AFP 272351 GMT 01 06
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