New Aam Standards For The Acquisition Of Archaeological Material And Ancient Art: A Minor “american Revolution”?

When the American Association of Museums (AAM) issued on 11 August, 2008, its new rules, Standards Regarding Archaeological Material and Ancient Art , CultureGrrl, perceiving the radical change the new rules implied, asked whether the makers of the rules realized what they were saying.

The new AAM rules provide that “Beyond the requirements of U.S. law, museums should not acquire any object that, to the knowledge of the museum, has been illegally exported from its country of modern discovery or the country where it was last legally owned”.

The new rules provide “in addition”, that museums should “require documentation that the object was out of its probable country of modern discovery by November 17, 1970”, the date of the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.

Both by the formulation of the rules and their location in the text, as well as the use of the phrase, “in addition”, one would conclude that the general rule is that a museum must not acquire an object that to its knowledge “has been illegally exported from its country of modern discovery or the country where it was last legally owned”. No limitation by date is included in this rule so that acquisitions before 1970 are also covered and not explicitly excluded.

This is intended, in my understanding, to discourage the acquisition of unprovenanced objects, no matter when they left their countries of origin, even if this was done before November 17, 1970. This provision seems to reflect the embarrassment experienced in the US when many leading American museums, including The Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Princeton University's Art Museum., found themselves in the unenviable situation of having to admit that they had acquired over the years art objects with no proper history and were obliged to return looted art objects to Italy. The press release on the AAM rules was entitled, Guidelines Provide Ethical Framework, Designed to Discourage Looting of Cultural Property . Moreover, the release states that the rules provide “clear ethical guidance on collecting such material so as to discourage illicit excavation of archaeological sites or monuments.”

As we mentioned in previous note, many museum directors and commentators have until now spoken and acted as if the UNESCO Convention somehow approved of all that had been done before 1970. The view had been that acquisitions and acts done before 1970 should not be questioned. We have argued that the 1970 Convention is no barrier to examining acquisitions before that date.

The new AAM rules seem to break the taboo date of 1970. My answer to the question by CultureGrrl is “YES BUT”. The makers of the new rules were all aware of the current practice which set 1970 as cut-off date for examining past acquisitions. They were well aware of the rules of the AAMD (Association of Art Museum Directors) which permitted acquisition of objects that left their source countries before 1970 irrespective of how they left. The AAMD rules allow the museum to decide whether to acquire or not, an object without a clearly established provenance. However in making such a decision, “the museum must carefully balance the possible financial and reputational harm of taking such a step against the benefit of collecting, presenting, and preserving the work in trust for the educational benefit of present and future generations”.

It seems that whereas the AAMD rules are content to ensure compliance with local and US laws, the new AAM rules consciously want to go beyond current laws and indeed expressly want to take the issue of acquisition of unprovenanced antiquities beyond the realm of the existing laws and bring it to a higher level of morality, hence the phrase, “beyond the requirements of U.S. law”. It is hence not enough to fulfil the bare and minimum requirements of the law. One must also ask whether, in all honesty, the object one is about to acquire was not wrongfully exported, even though the U.S. law would not forbid its acquisition. For instance, where there has been massive use of force, it will be the moral duty of the museum to examine whether in view of this factor it would not be better to stop the whole process of acquisition.

This interpretation of the new rules would permit the critical examination of acquisitions regarding the Benin bronzes which were surely “illegally exported” from Benin: they were stolen in 1897 by the invading soldiers of the British Punitive Expedition. The country where they were last legally owned would also be Benin. All those who acquired Benin bronzes in Great Britain, Germany and USA in 1897 and subsequent years knew they were buying stolen goods and could not be considered as having acquired them in good faith.`

However, the new AAM rules provide an escape clause for those museums that may wish to continue the old practice. The rules state that:

“AAM recognizes that there are cases in which it may be in the public's interest for a museum to acquire an object, thus bringing it into the public domain, when there is substantial but not full documentation that the provenance meets the conditions outlined above. If a museum accepts material in such cases, it should be transparent about why this is an appropriate decision in alignment with the institution's collections policy and applicable ethical codes.”

With all due respects to the makers of these rule, this provision, like its counterpart in the AAMD rules, opens the door to a continuation of the old practice. What do they mean by “substantial but not full documentation?”

Under the new rules, museums are expected to make available to the public the “known ownership history of the archaeological material and ancient art in their collections”. Claims to antiquities, “whether based on ethical or legal considerations, should be considered on their own merits”. It remains to be seen how the American museums will present the ownership histories of the looted Benin bronzes and other Asian and African artifacts in the museums and how claims to ownership will be handled.

It seems that many American museums have not yet accepted the view that removing objects from their archaeological context is damage to the history of the country concerned and a loss of very valuable information. They are not yet ready to renounce the acquisition of unprovenanced antiquities. Not even the massive scale of looting in Iraq has made them realize the damage caused directly or indirectly by the acquisition of unprovenanced antiquities. The formulation of the new AAM rules indicates that this is a hard-won compromise between those who seek to continue the practice of acquiring artifacts without clear history and those who want to put an end to this unethical and barbarous practice much criticized by the archaeologists. The solution of the AAM is what one often finds where there is division of opinion and both sides are almost equally strong: a bold general principle with an exception which almost negates totally the general principle. Both sides win. One step forward and one back

The rules appear as a triumphal return of morality and ethics to the subject of acquisition of art objects. It is also an attempt to free museums from the odour of collaboration with looters of antiquities and the stigma of illegality, with some museum directors, openly criticizing nations for attempting to curtail looting. In short, an attempted revolution in the acquisition practices of the leading American museums. Unfortunately, the makers of the AAM rules have not been bold enough to issue a clear rule that would ban all acquisitions with no proper history and have provided a way out for those not willing to accept that the acquisition of unprovenanced antiquities sustains and feeds the illicit traffic in antiquities.