Showing 2 results for the tag: Acquisition guidelines.

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.
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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.
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