Not long after the Italian government accused Getty Museum antiquities curator Marion True of knowingly trafficking in looted artifacts, a group of her friends and colleagues teamed up to vouch for her character.
In days, more than three dozen museum directors and top curators added their names to a letter that went to Getty Trust President Barry Munitz in late June. "We want to attest," they wrote, "to the absolute integrity and judgment of our esteemed colleague Marion True."
Now True is jobless, her Santa Monica condo is up for sale, and as her former Getty colleagues apply finishing touches to the project that was to be the capstone of her career, she and her husband are said to be living in France.
Not only is True's professional reputation as a reformer in peril, her judgment is under debate in museums around the world. Many of those who signed that June 28 letter would rather not talk about it now. And several of True's friends say they still don't understand how such a brilliant, upright woman could land in such hot water.
First, the Italian court case. Then, in early October, the retirement-inspiring revelation that True got help from a professional contact -- an art dealer -- in securing a 1995 personal loan for a vacation home in Greece. Then came reports that the Greeks too are negotiating with the Getty for the return of possibly ill-gotten artifacts.
"She is a person who has devoted most of her life to doing the right thing -- more so than 99% of the people I know," said Karen Manchester, curator of antiquities at the Art Institute of Chicago, who spent 11 years working at True's side. "I'm at a complete loss to understand what's going on there."
True isn't speaking publicly. But friends and colleagues paint a portrait of a woman of ferocious intellect and daunting memory, a vase maven who reads Latin, Greek and Italian and bestows names from mythology on her cats. This Marion True knits expertly, took up the lute as an adult, and always seemed the very picture of prudence.
Now True's calendar reads like the script for a Greek drama: First there's her 57th birthday (on Saturday), then the resumption of her Italian court case (on Nov. 16), and then construction crews in Malibu will wrap up work at the $275-million Getty Villa, a satellite museum, amphitheater and center for classical study that True spent 15 years planning.
