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THE GETTY MUSEUM IS IN A LEGAL FIGHT OVER ARMENIAN BIBLE PAGES
By Mike Boehm
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-armenian-bible-20111104,0,4956662.story
Nov 3 2011
Armenian Orthodox Church seeks eight pages of the Zeyt'un Gospels
that the Getty Museum bought in 1994. The Getty asked the motion to
be dismissed, but judge orders mediation.
The J. Paul Getty Trust failed Thursday to derail a lawsuit by
the Armenian Orthodox Church that accuses the museum of harboring
stolen illuminated medieval manuscripts - 755-year-old works that are
masterpieces and, to the church, spiritually and historically sacred.
After a brief hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Abraham Khan
denied the Getty's motion to dismiss the claim. The museum's attorneys
argued that the deadline for filing the suit had passed decades ago
under the statute of limitations. But the judge said that's "not clear"
and ordered four months of mediation, scheduling a March 2 resumption
if the case isn't settled.
At that point, the judge said, he might focus on the complicated
history of the pages' journey from the Turkish region of Cilicia
to America during and after the World War I-era Armenian genocide,
in order to determine whether the suit filed last year meets the
six-year statute of limitations.
The West Coast branch of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America -
acting on behalf of its mother church, the Lebanon-based Holy See
of Cilicia - hopes to recover the eight folded pieces of painted
parchment that once formed the front pages of a larger work called
the Zeyt'un Gospels. The Getty Museum bought the pages in 1994 for
$950,000. The church wants to send them to a museum in Yerevan,
capital of the Republic of Armenia, so they can be reunited with the
rest of the Zeyt'un Gospels, housed there since the 1960s.
Though disappointed with the ruling, the Getty said in a statement,
"we are confident that we hold legal title." Lee Boyd, heading the
church's legal team, said after the hearing that the Getty failed
to investigate the pages' provenance - or ownership history - when
it bought them from Armenian American heirs of a man the church says
stole the pages in 1916. The Zeyt'un Gospels briefly had fallen into
his hands amid the upheaval of the Turks' expulsion of the Armenian
community from Cilicia, then a region of the Ottoman Empire and now
part of Turkey.
Boyd said that the Getty also failed in 1994 to consult with officials
of the Matenadaran, the museum in Armenia whose collection includes
the rest of the Bible created in 1256 by T'oros Roslin, whom the
Getty's website describes as "the most accomplished master of Armenian
manuscript illumination."
The head of a leading manuscript archive said this week that instead
of falling back on legal arguments, the Getty should be addressing
ethical issues - and conclude that returning the pages would be proper.
Father Columba Stewart, a Benedictine monk and executive director
of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at St. John's University in
Collegeville, Minn., said that a whole work of art is better than a
divided one, and that when a museum has the power to turn a fragmented
manuscript into a complete one, it should do so.
"It's better from an artistic perspective ... it can [then] be studied
by scholars as a whole object," said Stewart, whose museum is creating
a comprehensive digital archive of Christian manuscripts from around
the world, and last month won the National Medal for Museum and
Library Service - the federal government's highest award in the field.
Acquiring individual sheets of a manuscript is improper, he said,
unless the original work already is so fragmented or scattered
that there's little chance it can be made whole. Museums must avoid
"contributing to an improper fragmentation of a work. In this instance,
it would not be a terribly complex matter to restore the whole."
Beyond that, Stewart said, the Getty, which in recent years repatriated
more than 40 artifacts to Greece and Italy after evidence showed
they had been looted from archaeological sites, should consider that
these works are still venerated: "Here's a living, breathing religious
community, as opposed to classical antiquities."
Responding in writing to Stewart's criticisms, Elizabeth Morrison, the
Getty's acting senior curator of manuscripts, said that "well-regarded
... collections around the world" contain individual manuscript sheets.
"The Getty in no way condones the practice of taking apart manuscripts,
but we continue to collect individual leaves after careful examination
proves that they have not recently been removed ...
with motives of financial gain."
The Republic of Armenia and the government-run Matenadaran are not
parties to the dispute, although the museum's director, Hrachya
Tamrazyan, last year sent a letter to church attorneys, confirming
that "we have asked you to represent ... the interest of the Republic
of Armenia ... including the Matenadaran, using your best efforts to
obtain the return of these treasures ... to their rightful owners."
In an interview Wednesday, Grigor Hovhannissian, the Armenian consul
general in Los Angeles, said that the museum director was speaking
for himself, not the government, which is taking "a wait and see
position.... There are issues we need to understand better."
Hovhannissian said this is the first cultural patrimony case to
have emerged since Armenia became an independent nation 20 years
ago. The case has been reported in the Armenian media, he said, and
"there's quite a bit of emotion, an emotionally charged atmosphere
when talking about this piece of art."
Vartkes Yeghiayan, an attorney for the church, said that its legal
team has identified at least 60 other Armenian manuscripts in American
collections - at Yale, Harvard and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore,
among others - that may have been stolen. Further suits may result,
he said, if church authorities give the go-ahead.
The suit against the Getty says that before the Armenian genocide,
the Zeyt'un Gospels resided at a church in Cilicia, where the work was
venerated and believed to possess holy powers that would protect the
community in times of war. In 1915, as Armenians in Turkey were being
killed or expelled, the suit says, the Bible was paraded through the
streets "to create a divine firewall of protection around the city."
It began to change hands for safekeeping, and in 1916, the suit says,
the disputed sheets were removed, resurfacing with an Armenian American
immigrant family in Massachusetts that sold them to the Getty.
The pages emerged in 1994 as an anonymous loan from the family to
an exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, which
traveled to the Walters Art Museum, where a critic for the Baltimore
Sun described the Zeyt'un pages as a "tour de force ... with their
elaborate trees, scrolls, cornucopias, columns, vases and pitchers,
and no fewer than 26 pairs of birds wearing brilliant plumage." The
Getty bought them at that time - a period when it was also acquiring
antiquities despite clear evidence they had been recently looted.
Under California law, suits to recover allegedly stolen artworks
from a museum or art dealer must be filed no later than six years
after the owner learns of their whereabouts. The Getty contends that
articles published in 1943 and 1952 prove that the church knew that
the Massachusetts family had the pages and should have sued for their
return back then.
Boyd, the church's lawyer, disputed that, adding that the Getty is
ignoring the historical reality then facing the Holy See of Cilicia,
which ministers to Armenian Orthodox adherents in North America and
the eastern Mediterranean. As church leaders tried to help persecuted
refugees rebuild shattered lives, she said, "cultural objects were
the last thing on their mind."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
By Mike Boehm
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-armenian-bible-20111104,0,4956662.story
Nov 3 2011
Armenian Orthodox Church seeks eight pages of the Zeyt'un Gospels
that the Getty Museum bought in 1994. The Getty asked the motion to
be dismissed, but judge orders mediation.
The J. Paul Getty Trust failed Thursday to derail a lawsuit by
the Armenian Orthodox Church that accuses the museum of harboring
stolen illuminated medieval manuscripts - 755-year-old works that are
masterpieces and, to the church, spiritually and historically sacred.
After a brief hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Abraham Khan
denied the Getty's motion to dismiss the claim. The museum's attorneys
argued that the deadline for filing the suit had passed decades ago
under the statute of limitations. But the judge said that's "not clear"
and ordered four months of mediation, scheduling a March 2 resumption
if the case isn't settled.
At that point, the judge said, he might focus on the complicated
history of the pages' journey from the Turkish region of Cilicia
to America during and after the World War I-era Armenian genocide,
in order to determine whether the suit filed last year meets the
six-year statute of limitations.
The West Coast branch of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America -
acting on behalf of its mother church, the Lebanon-based Holy See
of Cilicia - hopes to recover the eight folded pieces of painted
parchment that once formed the front pages of a larger work called
the Zeyt'un Gospels. The Getty Museum bought the pages in 1994 for
$950,000. The church wants to send them to a museum in Yerevan,
capital of the Republic of Armenia, so they can be reunited with the
rest of the Zeyt'un Gospels, housed there since the 1960s.
Though disappointed with the ruling, the Getty said in a statement,
"we are confident that we hold legal title." Lee Boyd, heading the
church's legal team, said after the hearing that the Getty failed
to investigate the pages' provenance - or ownership history - when
it bought them from Armenian American heirs of a man the church says
stole the pages in 1916. The Zeyt'un Gospels briefly had fallen into
his hands amid the upheaval of the Turks' expulsion of the Armenian
community from Cilicia, then a region of the Ottoman Empire and now
part of Turkey.
Boyd said that the Getty also failed in 1994 to consult with officials
of the Matenadaran, the museum in Armenia whose collection includes
the rest of the Bible created in 1256 by T'oros Roslin, whom the
Getty's website describes as "the most accomplished master of Armenian
manuscript illumination."
The head of a leading manuscript archive said this week that instead
of falling back on legal arguments, the Getty should be addressing
ethical issues - and conclude that returning the pages would be proper.
Father Columba Stewart, a Benedictine monk and executive director
of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library at St. John's University in
Collegeville, Minn., said that a whole work of art is better than a
divided one, and that when a museum has the power to turn a fragmented
manuscript into a complete one, it should do so.
"It's better from an artistic perspective ... it can [then] be studied
by scholars as a whole object," said Stewart, whose museum is creating
a comprehensive digital archive of Christian manuscripts from around
the world, and last month won the National Medal for Museum and
Library Service - the federal government's highest award in the field.
Acquiring individual sheets of a manuscript is improper, he said,
unless the original work already is so fragmented or scattered
that there's little chance it can be made whole. Museums must avoid
"contributing to an improper fragmentation of a work. In this instance,
it would not be a terribly complex matter to restore the whole."
Beyond that, Stewart said, the Getty, which in recent years repatriated
more than 40 artifacts to Greece and Italy after evidence showed
they had been looted from archaeological sites, should consider that
these works are still venerated: "Here's a living, breathing religious
community, as opposed to classical antiquities."
Responding in writing to Stewart's criticisms, Elizabeth Morrison, the
Getty's acting senior curator of manuscripts, said that "well-regarded
... collections around the world" contain individual manuscript sheets.
"The Getty in no way condones the practice of taking apart manuscripts,
but we continue to collect individual leaves after careful examination
proves that they have not recently been removed ...
with motives of financial gain."
The Republic of Armenia and the government-run Matenadaran are not
parties to the dispute, although the museum's director, Hrachya
Tamrazyan, last year sent a letter to church attorneys, confirming
that "we have asked you to represent ... the interest of the Republic
of Armenia ... including the Matenadaran, using your best efforts to
obtain the return of these treasures ... to their rightful owners."
In an interview Wednesday, Grigor Hovhannissian, the Armenian consul
general in Los Angeles, said that the museum director was speaking
for himself, not the government, which is taking "a wait and see
position.... There are issues we need to understand better."
Hovhannissian said this is the first cultural patrimony case to
have emerged since Armenia became an independent nation 20 years
ago. The case has been reported in the Armenian media, he said, and
"there's quite a bit of emotion, an emotionally charged atmosphere
when talking about this piece of art."
Vartkes Yeghiayan, an attorney for the church, said that its legal
team has identified at least 60 other Armenian manuscripts in American
collections - at Yale, Harvard and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore,
among others - that may have been stolen. Further suits may result,
he said, if church authorities give the go-ahead.
The suit against the Getty says that before the Armenian genocide,
the Zeyt'un Gospels resided at a church in Cilicia, where the work was
venerated and believed to possess holy powers that would protect the
community in times of war. In 1915, as Armenians in Turkey were being
killed or expelled, the suit says, the Bible was paraded through the
streets "to create a divine firewall of protection around the city."
It began to change hands for safekeeping, and in 1916, the suit says,
the disputed sheets were removed, resurfacing with an Armenian American
immigrant family in Massachusetts that sold them to the Getty.
The pages emerged in 1994 as an anonymous loan from the family to
an exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, which
traveled to the Walters Art Museum, where a critic for the Baltimore
Sun described the Zeyt'un pages as a "tour de force ... with their
elaborate trees, scrolls, cornucopias, columns, vases and pitchers,
and no fewer than 26 pairs of birds wearing brilliant plumage." The
Getty bought them at that time - a period when it was also acquiring
antiquities despite clear evidence they had been recently looted.
Under California law, suits to recover allegedly stolen artworks
from a museum or art dealer must be filed no later than six years
after the owner learns of their whereabouts. The Getty contends that
articles published in 1943 and 1952 prove that the church knew that
the Massachusetts family had the pages and should have sued for their
return back then.
Boyd, the church's lawyer, disputed that, adding that the Getty is
ignoring the historical reality then facing the Holy See of Cilicia,
which ministers to Armenian Orthodox adherents in North America and
the eastern Mediterranean. As church leaders tried to help persecuted
refugees rebuild shattered lives, she said, "cultural objects were
the last thing on their mind."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress