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Norms to discourage museum loot

— Photo: AFP

Priceless: Jewels are put on display, some of the 700 Iraqi antiquities which have been in the care of Syria authorities at the National Syrian Museum in Damascus in this recent photo. Many of the antiques were recovered from smugglers along the Syrian-Iraqi borders. Antiquities were looted from Iraq amid the chaos of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

NEW YORK: A group of museum directors has issued new guidelines for collecting antiquities with the goal of discouraging looting of archaeological treasures.

The guidelines announced on Wednesday by the Association of Art Museum Directors say that member museums should normally not acquire an ancient work of art unless research proves that the work was outside the country where it was discovered in 1970 or was legally exported from its country of discovery after 1970.

Objects without documentation going back that far are more likely to have been stolen or illegally dug up and smuggled out of their country of origin.

“AAMD’s new guidelines recognise and respond to complex legal and ethical issues that often surround acquisitions of archaeological material and ancient art, while concurrently adopting a proactive stance toward the preservation of archaeological sites and resources,” Dan Monroe, chairman of the subcommittee that drafted the report, said in a statement. Mr. Monroe is also director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

The new policy aims to dry up the market for antiquities that have been removed from archaeological sites under shady circumstances.

In recent years, museums including the Metropolitan Museum in New York, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles have agreed to return to Italy artefacts the Italian government says were looted or stolen.

The guidelines are voluntary, but the museum association urged its members to accept them and to develop acquisition policies that follow the recommendations.

The AAMD is a membership organisation representing 184 directors of major art museums in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The association is meeting in Detroit this week.

The guidelines were approved by the membership and published on the association’s website Wednesday. — AP

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Norms to discourage museum loot

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