Aphrodite Statue’s Last Days at the Getty Before Return to Italy
The Getty museum's ancient statue of the Greek love goddess is headed back home to Italy after a protracted international battle involving tomb-raiding art smugglers.
Sebastiano Missineo, the minister of culture from Sicily, and Karol Wight, senior curator of antiquities at the Getty Museum, stand near The Cult Statue of a Goddess, thought by some to be Aphrodite, during a visit to the Getty Villa in Malibu on Dec. 6,
Aphrodite may be the Greek goddess of love and sensual desire, but for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, she has come to symbolize the nasty underworld of an illicit antiquities trade that has stained the museum’s image for decades.
