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The Getty Museum And The Zeyt'Un Gospels Custody Battle

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  • The Getty Museum And The Zeyt'Un Gospels Custody Battle

    THE GETTY MUSEUM AND THE ZEYT'UN GOSPELS CUSTODY BATTLE

    Los Angeles Times
    http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-getty-20111113,0,6189239.story
    Nov 13 2011

    In the absence of clear-cut facts, the question is where, ethically
    and culturally, eight pages removed from the Armenian masterwork
    should reside.

    The medieval illuminated manuscript known as the Zeyt'un Gospels was
    rumored to hold supernatural powers that would protect the Armenian
    people. Whether or not that's the case, the manuscript itself has
    eluded destruction. Created by the Armenian illuminator T'oros Roslin
    in 1256 for Constantine I, the head of the Armenian Orthodox Church's
    Holy See of the Great House of Cilicia, the book passed through
    unknown numbers of hands, survived the Armenian genocide and ended
    up in a museum of ancient manuscripts in Yerevan. There it sits today.

    But it is missing eight pages - folios, really. There's no mystery
    about where they are. The J. Paul Getty Museum bought them from an
    Armenian American family in Massachusetts for just under $1 million in
    1994. They are elaborately painted canon tables, sort of an appendix
    to the gospels. One of the pages, so rich with detail that it looks
    like a mosaic, hangs on a wall of the Getty in Los Angeles. The others
    are in storage.

    These are the simplest facts in a legal battle that has pitted the
    Getty against the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, acting on
    behalf of its mother church overseas. The church claims the eight
    pages were stolen by a relative of the sellers some 90 years ago and
    that the Getty therefore had no right to buy them. The Getty contends
    that it has title free and clear. An L.A. Superior Court judge on Nov.

    3 denied the museum's motion to dismiss the claim and ordered both
    sides to mediation.

    Unfortunately, the two sides can't seem to agree on much. Getty
    officials say they were told by the sellers that their relative owned
    the book when he fled the tumult that began during World War I and
    culminated in the genocide of more than 1 million Armenians. Unable
    to carry out the entire book, the man removed eight pages and left
    the rest with a Protestant missionary.

    Getty staff say the story is supported by a 1943 essay by an art
    expert and Armenian church figure who saw the tables and wrote that
    the owner had inherited them from his father. He didn't connect them
    to the Zeyt'un Gospels, but nine years later, an art historian did.

    The pages were later put on display at the Pierpont Morgan Library
    in New York. According to Elizabeth Morrison, the Getty's acting
    senior curator of manuscripts, the pages were identified in the
    exhibition catalog as part of the Zeyt'un Gospels in the Matenadaran,
    the museum and archive in Armenia. Despite the published article and
    the high-profile exhibit, Getty officials say that for years no one
    came forward to question the legitimacy of the family's ownership.

    The Getty, rocked by scandal over its possession of antiquities that
    other nations claimed had been stolen, gave back 40 pieces of art to
    Italy and four to Greece several years ago and instituted one of the
    strictest acquisition policies of any museum in the world. Although
    the Zeyt'un folios were acquired in the 1990s, Morrison says the level
    of due diligence exercised in determining their provenance then would
    meet the museum's standards today.

    The Armenians beg to differ. The Getty, they say, either knew the
    pages were stolen or failed to do the checking necessary to find out.

    For instance, Getty officials didn't contact the Matenadaran to see
    if the museum questioned the provenance of the pages. ("We do not
    routinely check with other institutions when considering acquisitions,
    especially when an object has been so widely published," wrote the
    Getty's Morrison.)

    The Armenians note that these were pages from a manuscript that had
    been a treasure of the Armenian church since the 13th century. The
    book, they say, was handed off for safekeeping during the genocide,
    then rapidly changed hands again and again until it was passed to
    the man who removed the pages. They argue, and some experts agree,
    that it's unthinkable that Armenian church authorities, even during
    a time of turmoil, would have knowingly sold it or given it away.

    So where does that leave things? With a murky case of who knew what
    when, and little chance of ever learning which version of the facts
    is accurate.

    It's good that the Getty has instituted tighter rules for determining
    the provenance of new acquisitions, but it still needs to address
    situations in which the work was acquired before the rules were
    tightened. Every acquisition is different, but in this case, we wish
    Getty officials had contacted the museum that houses the manuscript
    from which the canon tables were extracted to ask if, perhaps, there
    was an issue.

    On the other hand, it's a little disingenuous for lawyers representing
    the Armenian church to argue both that the manuscript is one of its
    great historic treasures and, at the same time, that church officials
    did not even realize the canon tables were missing until 2006, when
    a Los Angeles lawyer discovered that they were at the Getty. That's
    a convenient argument that allows the church's claim to fall within
    the statute of limitations. Getty officials are rightly skeptical.

    That said, this is ultimately a custody case. In the absence of
    clear-cut facts, the remaining question is where, ethically and
    culturally, these works should reside. On the walls and in the vaults
    of a world-renowned, much-visited American museum? Or with the original
    manuscript in the region where they were commissioned 755 years ago?

    It would be better, in our view, if the pages were reunited with
    the book from which all agree they were severed. That's a common
    approach to dismembered statues, although it can be more complicated
    with manuscripts, if they've been cut apart and scattered. But in this
    case, the book is intact in Armenia save for the folios at the Getty.

    If the Getty agrees to return the pages, it should at the very
    least be permitted to exhibit the entire Zeyt'un Gospels with the
    canon tables. It would be a rare opportunity for the museum's huge
    visitorship and Southern California's large Armenian community,
    and would touch far more people than can visit the Matenadaran. And
    that seems an appropriate act of international goodwill and cultural
    enrichment.



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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