Museums: The Great Assyrian Affair

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Ever since the Los Angeles County Museum opened a year ago, a massive assemblage (8 ft. by 251 ft.) of dark alabaster Assyrian reliefs has stood proudly in the marble foyer. Admired by the museum's 2,000,000 visitors, the carved stone reliefs date back 27 centuries to the days when they graced the palace of Nimrud's King Ashurnasirpal. In Los Angeles, they seemed a perfect museum piece, just right for the space they occupied.

In fact, the Assyrian reliefs were anything but permanent, since the museum did not own them. Behind the scenes in recent months, ownership had been transferred to Switzerland and then to Fort Worth in a series of maneuvers that threatened to revive all the bitterness attending the resignation of Director Richard Brown last fall (TIME, Nov. 26).

Final Option. Nub of the controversy is that it was Rick Brown who 1) first discovered the reliefs in the warehouse of London Art Dealer Spink & Son, Ltd., 2) arranged for them to be sent to Los Angeles with an option to buy, 3) at the time of his resignation informed Spink that Los Angeles apparently was not going to exercise its option, and 4) urged their purchase by the as yet unbuilt Kimbell museum in Fort Worth, of which he is now director.

Priced at $405,000, the reliefs arrived 15 months ago in Los Angeles, were installed. There the matter lay while insurance adjusters went over the cost of the repair of damage suffered during shipment. Not until last August did the trustees vote to buy them for "not more than $350,000." The acquisitions committee, however, took no action. Meanwhile, according to Brown, option after option expired, only to be renewed. On Nov. 5, time ran out on Spink's last and final option. Then the Kimbell Foundation, with Brown acting as a freelance consultant, bought the reliefs through its Swiss agent.

Rising Tempers. In Los Angeles, where trustees thought they had an open-ended option, tempers rose when news of the deal came through, soared even higher when word of the price leaked out: $300,000-$50,000 less than Los Angeles had been willing to pay. Last week the Los Angeles County Museum was threatening to sue and the Kimbell Foundation was adamantly maintaining that the reliefs had been bought fairly and squarely.

Then suddenly the impasse broke. The Kimbell directors decided that it would be unseemly for the two institutions to squabble in the open, offered the Los Angeles museum a choice: either buy the reliefs at cost within 30 days or hold them until the Kimbell museum would be finished in 1969. Los Angeles Museum President Edward Carter summoned his trustees, then telegraphed their decision to put up the cash to keep the reliefs. And so, at week's end, still behind closed doors, the great Assyrian affair ended.