Showing 3 results for the tag: Association of Art Museum Directors.

August 15, 2012

Cleveland Museum of Art ignores its own acquisition guidelines

Posted at 1:08 pm in Similar cases

In 2008, new standards for museum acquisitions, set by the Association of Art Museum Directors, were adopted by most museums in the US. The Cleveland Museum of Art however currently appears to be ignoring both these & its own guidelines, with the purchase of two artefacts that many believe to be of dubious provenance.

From:
New York Times

Museum Defends Antiquities Collecting
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: August 12, 2012

Over the last five years, the Cleveland Museum of Art has been at work on one of the largest building programs of any art institution in the country, a $350 million project that has been unveiled in sleek new stages and will be completed by 2013, adding 35,000 more square feet of gallery space.

But the museum has also been building in less visible ways and is set to announce on Monday the acquisition of two high-profile ancient artifacts that seem certain to draw attention not only to the institution’s expansion but also to the complicated long-running debate about antiquities collecting by museums.
Read the rest of this entry »

June 5, 2008

New antiquity collecting guidelines released

Posted at 12:42 pm in Similar cases

More coverage of the acquisition guidelines for US museums, brought in largely to try & avoid repeats of some of the court cases that have occurred in recent years. These are however still only guidelines, so museums are free to ignore them & they don’t apply retroactively.

From:
Artinfo

New Guidelines for Collecting Antiquities
By ARTINFO
Published: June 4, 2008

NEW YORK—After a year and a half of discussions, the Association of Art Museum Directors has announced new guidelines for collecting antiquities, reports the New York Times. The new policy uses 1970, the year UNESCO ratified a landmark convention prohibiting trade in illegal antiquities, as its starting point, saying a museum “normally should not” acquire a work unless it has solid proof that the object was outside of its country of probable modern discovery before 1970, or that the object was legally exported from its country of probable modern discovery after 1970.
Read the rest of this entry »

June 4, 2008

US Museums bring in stricter antiquity acquisition guidelines

Posted at 12:23 pm in Similar cases

Stricter guidelines have been announced by the Association of Art Museum Directors in the USA. These revised guidelines will not of course apply retrospectively to the huge numbers of acquisitions with which many institutions are filled that took place before these guidelines were implemented.

From:
New Yorks Times

Museums Set Stricter Guidelines for Acquiring Antiquities
By RANDY KENNEDY
Published: June 4, 2008

After a year and half of deliberations, the directors of the country’s largest art museums will announce new guidelines on Wednesday for how their institutions should collect antiquities, a volatile issue that has led in recent years to international cultural skirmishes and several highly publicized art restitution cases.

The Association of Art Museum Directors, whose 190 members also include leaders of Canadian and Mexican museums, says the new policy will probably make it even more difficult for museums to build antiquities collections through purchases or, as is more often the case, through gifts and bequests from wealthy private collectors. But they assert that the change will help stanch the flow of objects illegally dug up from archaeological sites or other places.
Read the rest of this entry »