Museums Adopt New Antiquities Guidelines
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Association of Art Museum Directors, a membership body for directors of North American museums, has tightened its guidelines for acquiring antiquities.
The new guidelines, announced Wednesday, stipulate that AAMD members “should not normally acquire a work” unless research substantiates that it was outside its country of origin before 1970 or was legally exported after 1970. The cutoff date is taken from the date of the 1970 UNESCO Convention that sought to prohibit illicit trade in cultural property.
The policy is a significant change from the previous guidelines, which set a rolling 10-year cutoff date for acquiring antiquities of questionable origin. However, the guidelines are not mandatory, and decisions are left to individual museums’ discretion.
A report issued Wednesday by AAMD also announced the creation of a new section of the AAMD Web site, where museums will publish images and information on acquisitions of ancient works.
