ABSTRACT
The guidelines state that a museum should not normally acquire a work unless research substantiates that the object was out of its probable country of modern discovery before 1970, or was legally exported from its country of modern discovery after 1970. Such research should include thorough provenance research and an effort to obtain written documentation, including import and export documents. Such documentation should also be required not only of sellers, but donors as well. There is, however, a major loophole that allows museums to acquire antiquities when there is no provenance information if they deem that the “benefit of collecting, presenting, and preserving the work in trust for the educational benefit of present and future generations” outweighs the harm of acquiring a possibly looted antiquity.2 The AAMD has also posted an Object Registry on its website, which is searchable by a number of rubrics, including Cultures, Institutions, Object Types, Countries, and Materials and Techniques. The Registry, which should be a useful tool, requires museums to post an image and all information about the work, including provenance and “all facts relevant to the decision to acquire it.”3 The new guidelines have been met with approval by the Archaeological Institute of America, which has expressed the hope that decisions by museums to acquire antiquities will take into consideration “the rights of the country of origin and the potential harms to the world’s cultural heritage.”4
