Displaying items by tag: getty villa

Los Angeles’s Getty Museum is saving about 2,500 gallons of water per day thanks to its decision to shut down most of its fountains and pools of water as part of an effort to conserve water during California’s ongoing severe drought, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Some museum visitors have been sorry not to be able to experience the striking water features at the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, but the museum believes that saving water is more important. California governor Jerry Brown has made two emergency declarations this year, which, while voluntary, call on the state’s residents to do their part to limit water use during the drought.

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles will return a terracotta head depicting the Greek god Hades to Sicily. The museum has been working with Italian officials for two years to decide whether or not the artifact should be returned. The Getty purchased the terracotta head from New York collector Maurice Tempelsman for $530,000 in 1985. Tempelsman had originally acquired the piece from the disgraced antiquities dealer Robin Symes.

Officials determined that the terracotta head was originally located in Sicily at a sanctuary site for the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The piece’s provenance was discovered by comparing the head to four terracotta fragments found near the famous and highly looted archaeological site Morgantina in Sicily. It soon came to light that the head was illegally excavated from Morgantina in the early 1970s.

The Getty entered into an agreement with Italy’s Ministry of Culture in 2007 after a long legal battle regarding looted works and the museum’s former curator, Marion True. The Getty now has connections in various parts of Italy to facilitate cultural exchange and has been working closely with Sicilian officials since 2010.

The head of Hades will be on view at the Getty Villa as part of the exhibition The Sanctuaries of Demeter and Persephone at Morgantina through January 21, 2013. The work will then join the Getty-organized traveling exhibition Sicily: Art and Invention between Greece and Rome before being placed in Sicily’s Museo Archeologico.