Getty Museum's Legal Issues Over Armenian Bible Continue

Detail from circa 13th Century Armenian Bible

In recent years, top-layer museums have become embroiled over holdings which, in certain cases, have dodgy provenance. Marquee names, including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, have made splashy settlements over allegations of harboring looted artifacts and treasures. A repeat actor in the art world's mercantile shadows is LA's Getty Museum. Its most recent controversy involves a legal fight over custody of beautiful pages of a nearly eight-century-old illuminated Armenian Bible.

The LA Times reported today on a judge's recent decision to encourage the opposing parties in the lawsuit to "compromise."  What that means is anyone's guess. The Times story does a good job of summarizing the case, its background, and its context in the larger, thorny issue of the right to acquire and keep portions of another nation's artistic patrimony. If you think the question is one of simple morality, just take a moment to imagine the Louvre without its "found" works. (Napoleon, for example, did a splendid job moving art work to the museum. The French government has not returned any of it, at least that I'm aware of.)

I don't know where the justice is in the current lawsuit against the Getty Museum. However, we all can take a moment to admire the exquisite artwork at the heart of the case. (The above image is a detail of one of the pages at issue in the court proceedings.) The pages were certainly created by a wonderful artist, who in all likelihood was a true believer in the spiritual world embedded in the Bible. We are fortunate that this work, and other artistic  from distant epochs, remain available and visible to us today.