U.S. museums told to reveal past ownership of artifacts

New guidelines follow scandals over artifacts looted from archeological sites
Last Updated: Monday, August 11, 2008 | 5:47 PM ET
CBC News

A U.S. museums association is recommending museums make ownership records publicly available for all ancient art and archeological artifacts in their collections.

The American Association of Museums is also recommending rigorous research into the history of any new acquisition.
It would allow anonymous donations, but only where the donor can provide a full history of the work.
The association released a set of guidelines for its 3,000 members Monday, after working on them for two years.
They were a response to scandals involving artifacts looted from archeological sites that turned up in U.S. museums such as the Getty in Los Angeles and the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Several U.S. museums have returned artifacts to Italy after discovering they were stolen.
"The American people rely on museums to preserve and interpret the world's cultural heritage," AAM president Ford W. Bell said after releasing the guidelines.

"In recent years, however, the public has come to expect that museums, through their collecting activities, do not contribute to the illicit trade in cultural property."
Some museums are already in compliance with the new guidelines, especially when it comes to acquiring new artifacts.
However, it may take some time before they can trace the provenance of items that have been in their collection for some time, Bell said.

It can be difficult to trace the ownership of antiquities or of Nazi-era artwork.
The AAM is recommending museums establish their own clear collections policies and require documentation that new artifacts have not been illegally exported from their countries of origin.

Future acquisitions should at the very least be documented back to November 1970 when the U.S. signed the United Nations convention on the trade of cultural property, its guidelines said.