Jiří Frel

Jiří Frel (often spelled as Jiri Frel, 1923 — 29 April 2006) was a Czech and American archaeologist. Between 1973 and 1986 he served as a curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum. He is credited with the expansion of the collection of antiquities of the museum, but he was also involved in a number of controversies, including a tax manipulation scheme to buy artifacts of dubious provenance and purchase of a number of artifacts widely considered to be fake.

Frel was born in Moravia and studied in Paris. He returned to Czechoslovakia after World War 2 and obtained a doctorate from Charles University in Prague. Subsequently, he was employed by the Greek and Roman art department of Charles University and taught there. In 1969, following the Warsaw Pact Invasion, Frel emigrated to the United States. For a short period, he taught at Princeton University, subsequently worked as an associate curator of Greek and Roman art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1973, he became the curator of the department of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum.