PARIS, FRANCE.-Former Getty curator Jiri Frel, 82, died in Paris. He was born in Czechoslovakia in 1923. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and earned a doctorate from Charles University in Prague. He taught in the Greek and Roman art department and fled Czechoslovakia after the Soviet take over. He was an associate curator of Greek and Roman art at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In 1973 J. Paul Getty hired him as antiquities curator.

Jiri Frel helped the Getty acquire hundreds of ancient Greek and Roman vases, statues and pottery. He also acquired the Getty kouros statue that was thought to be fake. In 1984 he was demoted when it was discovered that he engineered a tax manipulation scheme used to expand the collection. In 1986 he resigned from the Getty. Jiri Frel also was responsible for hiring Marion True who is currently on trial in Rome on charges of conspiring to traffic in illegal artifacts.