The answer lies at the Getty, one of the world's richest and most troubled museums, and scandalous revelations that it had been buying looted antiquities for decades. Drawing on a trove of confidential museum records and frank interviews, Felch and Frammolino give us a fly-on-the-wall account of the inner workings of a world-class museum and tell the story of the Getty's dealings in the illegal antiquities trade. The outlandish characters and bad behavior could come straight from the pages of a thriller--the wealthy recluse founder, the cagey Italian art investigator, the playboy curator, the narcissist CEO--but their chilling effects on the rest of the art world have been all too real, as the authors show in novelistic detail.

Fast-paced and compelling, Chasing Aphrodite exposes the layer of dirt beneath the polished fa ade of the museum business.