The Italian government case against the Getty is a warning to all museums. “At the center of the case is the reckless youth of the Getty, which opened in the villa in 1974 to fulfill the oil baron J. Paul Getty’s twin obsessions with art collecting and imperial Rome. But the case also presents a paradox, for curator Marion True had gone to considerable lengths to acknowledge the Getty’s past excesses and to cast the museum as a model citizen of the museum and archaeological worlds.” Nonetheless, “Italian officials say that the evidence they have assembled reaches far beyond the Getty. Whether more prosecutions are planned or such warnings are simply intended to force the return of art and deter illicit purchases remains unclear.”