Days before a threatened cultural embargo was scheduled to take effect, the J. Paul Getty Museum has resumed negotiations with the Italian government over 46 of the museum's disputed antiquities -- opening the door to a possible agreement.
In an exchange described by a Getty official as "intense" and "useful," the museum has exchanged letters with Italy's minister of culture, exploring possible settlements of the dispute, authorities from both sides confirmed Monday.
Neither side would provide details of the negotiations, but Getty spokesman Ron Hartwig said Monday that museum officials were "hopeful this will lead to a resolution.... We believe both sides are committed to resolving the issues that separate us."
The apparent breakthrough comes after an eight-month deadlock and was made possible when Italy took off the table what had been a key sticking point in the talks: the fate of the so-called Getty Bronze, a 4th century BC statue of a young athlete found by Italian fishermen in the 1960s.
The statue is considered a signature piece in the Getty's antiquities collection, occupying a climate-controlled room built specially for it at the Getty Villa, near Malibu.
A senior Italian official said the culture ministry decided that the fate of the statue should not be negotiated until a new criminal investigation into the statue's discovery and export from Italy is complete. The official asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak on the record while negotiations were ongoing.
The new investigation, being conducted by a regional magistrate, was requested several months ago by a local citizens group in Fano, hometown of the fishermen who found the statue, brought it ashore and hid it in a cabbage field before selling it to a local dealer.
But even its citizen sponsors admit the investigation is unlikely to uncover the full story of the artifact's discovery and export from Italy. Nearly four decades have passed since the bronze athlete left Italy under mysterious circumstances, and many of the people involved have since died.
Even with the impasse broken, the Getty and Italy have tough negotiations ahead, including the fate of the museum's prized statue of Aphrodite and several other of the collection's masterpieces.
Italy first formally demanded the return of the bronze and 45 other antiquities in January 2006, saying the they had been illicitly excavated and smuggled out of Italy before being purchased by the Getty Museum.
