J Paul Getty

The J. Paul Getty Museum plans to announce today the return of two prized ancient masterpieces to Greece, which has maintained for a decade that they were illegally removed from the country, according to two sources familiar with recent negotiations. The objects are a rare funerary wreath and a marble statue of a woman, both dating to about 400 BC. The Getty bought both objects in 1993 for a total of $4.45 million.

The J. Paul Getty Museum has agreed in principle to return some of the four antiquities Greek authorities have claimed were illegally removed from that country, and will continue negotiations over the remaining pieces. In a meeting in Athens with Greek cultural officials Tuesday morning, the Getty's new director, Michael Brand, said he would recommend that the museum return an unspecified number of the contested objects "in the near future."

A COUPLE of months ago, I submitted my application to become the interim director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. I suggested a tenure of just 18 months because all I had in mind was reforming its troubled antiquities division. I thought I knew how to do it because I've been a bad boy and a good boy in the antiquities game.

"It's a masterpiece," Scott Schaefer whispered to himself last Tuesday morning, just before Claude Monet's Impressionist painting, "The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light," went on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty had purchased the shimmering, blue-gray portrayal of Rouen's gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame and taken delivery just a few days earlier.

In a long-running legal battle with broad implications for museum collections worldwide, a senior curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has been indicted here on criminal charges involving the acquisition of precious antiquities in this archeologically rich country, authorities in Rome said. Marion True, 56, curator for antiquities at the museum and director of the Getty Villa, is accused of criminal conspiracy to receive stolen goods and illicit receipt of archeological items.

The $1-billion Getty Center is a cultural landmark without parallel in 20th century America, a unique complex of art, architecture and scholarship. Completion is a civic feat that honors those who made it possible, and its opening on Tuesday should be a source of great pride in Los Angeles. Awaiting visitors at the site atop a Brentwood promontory are six clustered structures covered with craggy travertine evoking ancient Rome.

Civic culture. Private life. These two themes have dominated urban planning debates in this country since the turn of the century. But for the J. Paul Getty Trust, the balance between local needs and public mission must seem like a recurring nightmare. In a public presentation before a city of Los Angeles hearing examiner scheduled for Dec. 7, trust officials will unveil their latest program for the renovation and expansion of the famed villa complex of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

At the heart of the matter is a Boeing 727 jet, and a real nice one at that. It has a huge galley for cooks to prepare world-class meals, a combination conference and sitting room, a dining room and a master suite with two bedrooms featuring king-size beds and showers. Price tag: $8.6 million. That is what Gordon Getty, son of the late oil baron J. Paul Getty, and his wife, Ann, paid for the customized aircraft in 1986.

Building it down to code Robert Langdon Jr., designer of the Getty Villa, died in 2004. But long before he did, he told The Times in a 1981 interview that the villa had been his toughest project. Construction required 33 permits, he said, and the long reflecting pool in the outer peristyle area had to be dug "exactly 17 7/8 inches deep. If it had been one-eighth of an inch deeper, it would have required a chain-link fence around it and a lifeguard."