MUSEUMS IN THE United States—whether incorporated as nonprofit organizations, created as part of larger institutions such as colleges and universities, or established as part of federal, state, or local governments—are expected to act for the benefit of the public. Laws and regulations establish minimum standards of conduct for museum operations, while professional codes of ethics promote higher standards. In the words of Marie Malaro, author of A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections, “The law is not designed to make us honorable, only bearable,” while “an ethical code sets forth conduct that a profession considers essential in order to uphold the integrity of the profession.”1 Adherence to guidance provided by professional codes of ethics helps ensure that museums not only serve the public, but also do so with integrity and, in turn, obtain and maintain the public’s confidence and trust.
The Code of Ethics for Museums of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) states that, “museums make their unique contribution to the public by collecting, preserving and interpreting the things of this world,”2 thereby acknowledging that collections and their care are a central concern for museums. And because museums hold their collections in trust for the public, instituting and maintaining ethical practices in managing collections is essential.
Registrars and collections managers3 are stewards of museum collections and, as such, have an ethical responsibility to safeguard their institution’s collections and collection records. This responsibility extends to all aspects of collections care from developing collections management policies to daily maintenance, from advising on the liabilities that proposed acquisitions might involve to recommending conservation treatments on permanent holdings, from overseeing incoming and outgoing collection loans to ensuring appropriate deaccessioning and disposal practices. Each of these areas should be ad dressed in an institution’s code of ethics, which provides basic guidance for collections stewards.
A collections management policy should establish ethical practices regarding the museum’s collections and detail procedures to be followed for acquisition; accessioning; collection care; documentation; conservation; use of objects for exhibition, education, and research; deaccessioning and disposal; and accessibility of collections and collections records (see CHAPTER 2, “Collection Management Policies”). Policies set forth best practices but do not necessarily provide guidance for all problems that arise. It is not always easy to distinguish between operational or managerial problems that have ethical ramifications and those that do not, but when a problem arises that is not easily resolved by a museum’s personnel and collections-related policies, it is likely to have ethical ramifications.
The first step in resolving an ethical problem is to gather all of the facts, identifying all the people and organizations that could be affected by the resolution. Be as objective as possible; separate the relevant facts from other information that could affect your decision (e.g., emotional responses or personal opinion rather than fact). Is there an issue here that has to do with right or wrong? If so, it is likely to be an ethical issue. At this point, consult your institution’s code of ethics—absent that, consult other professional codes of ethics that might apply. Then discuss the problem with colleagues, either at your own institution or others, to see if they have experience that might help guide your decision-making.
Now you are ready to formulate possible solutions to the problem (see BOX 7A.1). List your options and again consult professional codes of ethics and relevant laws to be sure that your options conform. Consider the possible consequences of the solutions. Who will they impact? How will you respond? Be sure to consider both positive and negative consequences and have a strategy in place for responses that could have adverse consequences for your institution. Next, get feedback about the solutions from colleagues and use that feedback to evaluate your options, then revise them if necessary. After you make a decision, create a series of action steps for its implementation, remembering to notify stakeholders first.4
BOX 7A.1 FRAMEWORK FOR APPROACHING ETHICAL PROBLEMS
1. S. Yerkovich, A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), xi–xii.
Finally, it is not unusual to conflate one’s personal attitude or opinion about a problem (what one thinks one ought to do to resolve the situation) with what one believes a museum’s position on the situation should be. Although the two are sometimes the same—for example, a registrar’s personal feelings might dictate that a donors’ personal information should remain private and the museum’s policies mandate that all such information is confidential—there are other circumstances in which an individuals’ personal attitudes do not align with the ethical obligations of the institution. In the latter case, the institution’s obligations should take precedence. Thus, it is critical to understand your museum’s ethics code and how it relates to the responsibilities of your position.
Although the decision about whether to acquire an object may rest with the museum’s governing body or a collections or accessions committee, the registrar has an obligation to advise the decision-making body concerning the resources that may be necessary to acquire, store, maintain, and preserve the object in perpetuity so that the decision makers can make informed choices. The following questions should be considered:
Answers to these questions can help the museum staff make ethical decisions about acquisitions and potentially avert problematic situations in the future. When the decision is made to acquire an object, registrars have the responsibility of formally adding the object to the museum’s permanent collection by assigning a unique accession number to it and creating accession and catalog records.
It must be noted that museums are expected to use the same standards of care in accepting a loan of objects for a temporary exhibition. Consider the following:6
Javin Smith served in the US Army in South America and was one of the troops that were present during the capture of the dictator of a country frequently associated with terrorist activities. In a storage room adjacent to the dictator’s residence, Javin and his comrades came across a cache of rocks. Javin’s father is a rock collector and Javin thought he might be inter ested in rocks from Latin America, so he pocketed a few to take to him. When Javin’s father saw the rocks, he told Javin that they were raw, semi-precious stones. Javin later learned from Army intelligence that the dictator may have been selling the rocks to fund terrorist activities. Javin considered these rocks to be souvenirs of his danger-ridden experiences in South America and had them made into bracelets for himself and for one or two of his buddies who served with him in the Army. Javin subsequently heard that the local Army museum was planning an exhibition about the US presence in Latin America that especially focused on the overthrow of the dictator. Javin approached the museum staff to ask if they would be interested in borrowing his bracelet and displaying it in the exhibition.
If you were the registrar of the museum, would you recommend that the museum accept Javin’s offer of a loan for the exhibition? Would your advice remain the same if Javin were offering to donate the bracelet to your museum’s collection?
Once an object is accessioned, the museum takes on the responsibility of protecting and preserving it so that it might be used for the public’s benefit in perpetuity. Collections stewards—whether curators, collections managers, or registrars—have the day-today responsibility for overseeing the collections and maintaining collections records, and they have an ethical obligation to notify the appropriate staff or management when one or more collection objects are at risk (e.g., when they are in irreparable condition; when the condition of one object might jeopardize other objects in the museum’s permanent collection; when an object is in need of conservation treatment; or when the loan or exhibition of an object might endanger its condition).
Museums have an ethical responsibility to maintain collections records with the same care as the collections themselves, for the records provide critical documentation concerning ownership, condition, locations, exhibition, loans, and publications. Registrars oversee these records day-to-day, ensuring that the documents are secure, and determining—sometimes in consultation with curatorial staff—what information can be made public and what should remain confidential.
Collections management, although seemingly routine, brings up many challenges for collections stewards. Consider the following scenario related to collections management:
It’s Monday morning. Regina Rule, the collections manager for the Museum of Regional History, walks into the collections storage area to continue an inventory of the museum’s decorative arts collection. The last full inventory was completed in the 1950s, long before computer software was common in museums, so part of Regina’s job now is to reconcile written records with the information entered by volunteers into the data management program purchased for the museum in the mid-1990s. Regina is especially sensitive to issues of provenance that were not so much a concern in the past; certainly provenance was not on the minds of the staff doing the last collections inventory. To date, Regina has found few discrepancies among the old record books, the data, and the decorative arts collection, so she is optimistic that she can complete the inventory in much less time than she had allocated. As she turns to the next group of objects she plans to inventory, she notices a box under a bottom shelf. Opening the box, she discovers several wooden objects, possibly tools, similar to many others in the collection. They have no accession numbers, and there is no documentation about the objects in the box.
To continue the inventory in a timely fashion, can Regina simply put the objects back in their box and make sure that the box disappears under the shelf to be dealt with at a later date, or does she have an ethical obligation to report her discovery? Would your answer be different if the box contained what appeared to be an early twentieth-century European impressionist painting?
Regina shares her discovery with one of the museum’s curators who remembers that a few years before Regina was hired, her predecessor found the box under the admissions desk. The former registrar was told that the box had been dropped off at the museum over the weekend, several months previous, by someone who did not identify herself. Ms. Anonymous said she would be moving out of the country the next day and wanted the objects in the box to have a home where they would be appreciated. Before the person at the admissions desk could ask for more information or explain the museum’s acquisitions policies, the woman left the museum. The former registrar, who had just been hired by another museum and was about to leave his position at the Museum of Regional History, said he would take the box and put it in collections storage. The box remained there until Regina found it.
Does this additional information change your assessment of Regina’s dilemma? To whom do the objects in the box belong? Does the situation now involve abandoned property laws and add a legal dimension to Regina’s problem?7
Sometimes a museum’s ownership of an object might be called into question. For example, NAGPRA resulted in the repatriation of human remains and associated sacred objects to the Native American tribes from which they originated (discussed in CHAPTER 7F, “Implementing NAGPRA”). In the late 1990s attention was drawn to the fact that many artifacts and paintings had been unjustly confiscated during World War II and subsequently not returned to their rightful owners.8 In 1998, as a result of the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art were issued, outlining the need for museums to ensure that their collections contain no material looted during World War II.9 As a result, many museums surveyed their collections to identify objects that may have changed hands in Europe between 1933 and 1945. Although not a law like NAGPRA, the Washington Principles and the international declarations made thereafter place an ethical obligation on museums to ensure that their collections do not contain objects unjustly acquired during the Holocaust.10 As a result, many museums have had to revisit the ownership history of objects that previously raised no eyebrows, and registrars might be called upon to recommend actions that should be pursued in response to inquiries about particular museum holdings. Consider the following situation:
The Marrywell Art Museum has in its collection a small oil painting depicting a Paris urban street scene. The painting, a donation from Franklin Wellman, a well-known local collector who also happens to be one of the museum’s major benefactors and a descendant of the Marrywell family, has been in the Marrywell’s collection for three decades. One day the museum’s director receives a letter from a woman who claims the painting belonged to her great aunt and that it went missing from the aunt’s Parisian apartment in 1943. Her proof of her aunt’s ownership of the painting is a photograph taken when she visited her aunt in her aunt’s apartment in the early 1940s. A copy of the photo included in the letter presumably shows the women (then a child) standing near the painting which is hung over what she claims was her aunt’s mantel. Although the photo is a bit blurry, the painting seems to be the painting in the Marrywell Museum’s collection; the frame also appears to be the same. The woman asserts that she is the last living relative of her aunt and requests the painting be returned to her. The museum director asks the registrar about the painting and she discovers that the museum has little information about the painting’s provenance. Museum records show that Wellman bought the painting at a European auction in the 1960s. The records only contain a bill of sale made out to Wellman. There appears to be no record of ownership prior to that time.
Does the registrar have enough information regarding whether the museum is the rightful owner of the painting? What facts would help the registrar make a recommendation to the director? Claims such as the one in this scenario should be taken seriously,11 but at the same time, the museum must ensure that it has sufficient evidence to support a claim of ownership. Either unjustly retaining the painting or returning it to the wrong claimant can present problems for a museum.12
Appropriately accounting for, maintaining, and preserving museum collections, although central to a registrar’s duty, is not the end-all and be-all for the objects that the museum holds. Museums maintain their collections for the benefit of the public and have an ethical duty to ensure that the collections are available for exhibitions and programs as well as for inquiry, research, and study. Museum staff who are responsible for the physical care of collections in storage need to balance requests for accessibility with concerns for the safety of the objects in the collection. Given the trend among museums to focus on visitor experience, audience development, and community engagement, collections stewardship becomes more complicated. Collections may be used in new and different ways to engage the public imagination. Nonetheless, to ensure that the collections are maintained for the public benefit, the integrity of a museum’s holdings should be safeguarded while still allowing for experimentation. Museum staff most familiar with the collections and their care can contribute valuable information that would allow for using collections in novel ways without endangering them.
Sometimes, requests for access to a museum’s collections can compete. Consider Ralph Registrar’s problem:
One day Ralph is approached by the Bayside Museum’s curator of paintings to provide last minute access for a well-known scholar who is visiting Bayside over the weekend. He wishes to come to the museum the next Saturday to view some nineteenth-century landscapes for an article that he is writing for a prestigious national publication. The paintings have been in storage for the last five years but have recently been conserved so that they can be part of an upcoming exhibition. The scholar’s article promises to give the museum long-sought after attention to its collection. A few months ago, Ralph arranged with the Education Department for the same paintings to be part of an all-day workshop for local children who attend a school that lacks the resources to bring the students to the museum during the week. With the help of a grant, the museum is able to bring the school children to visit the museum on Saturday and participate in an intensive workshop.
What should Ralph consider in responding to the request from the curator?
When guided by a museum’s collections policy and code of ethics, deaccessioning—the removal of an object from a museum’s permanent collections—is considered a routine and responsible collections practice in the United States.13 If a museum decides to sell objects that are deaccessioned from its permanent collection, however, controversy can result, and the ensuing debate can raise ethical questions. It is important to understand the underlying ethical principles concerning disposal that are articulated in museum professional codes of ethics.
It is a basic principle of museum ethics that the decision to deaccession should be made for substantive, mission-related reasons (see CHAPTER 3I, “Deaccessioning and Disposal”) and should under no circumstances be motivated only by financial considerations. Nonetheless, ethical questions can arise concerning the use of funds garnered from an object’s sale. A number of professional museum associations address this issue in their codes of ethics. Although specific code provisions may vary, the basic premise behind all of them is that once objects become part of museum collections they are valued for their cultural, historical, or scientific importance rather than for their resale value in the marketplace.14
The AAM Code of Ethics for Museums (1994, revised 2000) states:
Disposal of collections through sale, trade or research activities is solely for the advancement of the museum’s mission. Proceeds from the sale of nonliving collections are to be used consistent with the established standards of the museum’s discipline, but in no event shall they be used for anything other than acquisition or direct care of collections.15
Because the phrase direct care of collections created some confusion among museums, AAM convened a task force that produced a white paper on the subject in 2016. The white paper, “Direct Care of Collections: Ethics, Guidelines and Recommendations,” acknowledges the appropriateness of deaccessioning as a means for managing collections but cautions that museums should “ensure that funds realized from the sale of deaccessioned objects are never used as a substitute for fiscal responsibility.” It underscores both the critical importance of responsible collections stewardship and the cultural—not financial—value of museum collections, defining direct care as “an investment that enhances the life, usefulness or quality of a museum’s collection.”16 The white paper provides guidance and recommendations about how to interpret the definition of direct care because the interpretation of this phrase could vary from museum to museum. As a result, the report encourages each museum that wishes to use funds for direct care to create specific policies concerning direct care and include them in its collections management policy.
The AAM Code of Ethics also prohibits the use of collections as collateral for loans, specifying that “collections…are lawfully held, protected, secure, unencumbered, cared for and preserved.”
The Policy on Deaccessioning of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) states that deaccessioning should be used to “refine and improve the quality and appropriateness of the collections” to better serve the museum’s mission. AAMD prohibits the use of funds realized from the sale of deaccessioned objects for “operations or capital expenses. Such funds, including any earnings and appreciation thereon, may be used only for the acquisition of works in a manner consistent with the museum’s policy on the use of restricted acquisition funds.”17 In other words, AAMD’s policy states that none of the proceeds from the sale of collections may be used for operating expenses not related to new acquisitions.
The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) Statement of Standards and Ethics states that, “Historical resources should not be capitalized or treated as financial assets.” The standards stress that deaccessioning decisions should “under no circumstances” be made because of an object’s potential market value. Citing the AAM definition of direct care of collections, AASLH standards and ethics also stipulate that “funds from the sale of collections may be used for the acquisition of collections, or the direct care or preservation of existing collections. Funds should not be used to provide financial support for institutional operations.” The standards provide similar guidance concerning the use of funds from deaccessioning for accessioned buildings and landscapes of historical properties, stating that, for these collections, institutional collections management policies should distinguish between building maintenance and building preservation.18
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums stipulates that deaccessioning “must only be undertaken with a full understanding of the significance of the item, its character (whether renewable or nonrenewable), legal standing, and any loss of public trust that might result from such action.” Further it states that museums should have a written policy for disposal and that “there will be a strong presumption that a deaccessioned item should first be offered to another museum.” It also confirms that “museum collections are held in public trust and may not be treated as a realizable asset. Money or compensation received from the deaccessioning and disposal of objects and specimens from a museum collection should be used solely for the benefit of the collections and usually for acquisition to that same collection.”19
The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) Professional Practices for Academic Museums & Galleries addresses the situation of museums that are part of the structure of academic institutions such as universities and colleges. It stresses that, “in addition to complying with the university’s code of ethics, the academic museum must codify and formally approve its ethical responsibilities as a museum…. The museum’s code of ethics must affirm that it puts the public trust above the interests of the university, museum, or any individual” and that museum collections must not be considered “fungible assets used to sustain the parent institution.” AAMG also affirms, along with AAM, AAMD, and AASLH that collections should be “unencumbered”; that is, they cannot be used as a collateral for a loan. Finally, “AAMG recommends that funds from deaccessioning only be used for new collections acquisitions, unless the museum is no longer acquiring objects, in which case such funds may be used for the care of the existing collection. It does, however, recognize that the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) specifies that history museums can use such funds for acquisition or preservation of collection objects.”20
The Society of American Archivists (SAA) Guidelines for Reappraisal and Deaccessioning note the ethical implications involved in the disposal of collection objects and urge transparency, adding that “reappraising and deaccessioning collections for the primary purposes of generating operating income; satisfying personal interests, aversions, or prejudices; and pleasing donors or resource allocators are not consistent actions with best practices or the SAA Code of Ethics.” Although this document and the SAA Code of Ethics do not specify how funds realized from the sale of deaccessioned objects should be used, SAA refers to codes of ethics for “affiliated professions” as guidance to generate standards, noting that “many of them allow for sale proceeds to be used only for new acquisitions or direct care of collections.”21
During deaccessioning, as with acquisitioning, the responsibility of the registrar or collections manager is largely advisory. Information provided by a museum’s registrar can help a museum make ethical decisions regarding the removal of objects from its collections. A registrar’s considerations might include the following:
Once the decision to deaccession an object is made, registrars should update collection records, helping to ensure that the museum fulfills its ethical obligation to maintain records of all of its collection objects, even those that have been deaccessioned.
If a museum decides to sell a deaccessioned object at public auction, care should be taken to ensure that the sale is conducted with transparency and that there are no conflicts of interest involved. Members of a museum’s governing body and their families, as well as museum staff, volunteers, and their relatives, should not be allowed to purchase objects from the museum’s collections. Similarly objects from the collections should not be sold in the museum’s shop.
After the final disposition of a deaccessioned object, it is the registrar’s responsibility to record the disposition in the object’s collection records. If an object is sold and funds realized from the sale are used to purchase another object for the collection, it is appropriate to note that fact in the collection records for both the sold and the newly purchased items so that the information is available for future use by curators, researchers, and others interested in the object’s history.
Museums, like other nonprofits, are required by federal law to have a conflict-of-interest policy for their governing body. All board members have a duty of loyalty that requires them to put the interests of the museum they serve above their own interests. Moreover, a conflict-of-interest policy should require that board members declare possible conflicts of interest annually. Ms. Builder, for example, owns a construction company and is a board member of a museum that is planning to renovate its galleries. Should her company compete for the renovation contract? Is it enough for Ms. Builder to recuse herself from the board’s vendor selection process? This situation presents a potential conflict of interest because Ms. Builder stands to benefit if her company wins the renovation contract. While recusing oneself from the selection process might satisfy the museum’s internal procedures, one must also consider how the public will perceive the situation.22
Many museums include in their conflict-of-interest policy provisions regarding personal collecting. If a board member, for example, collects objects similar to those in a museum’s collection, it would be appropriate for the museum to request that the board member disclose personal collecting interests so that the board member and the museum do not unknowingly compete with one another in buying objects. Similarly, if a board member purchases an object that might fall within the collecting interests of the museum, the board member should offer the object to the museum at the purchase price. The museum then has the option to buy the object.
Although some museums encourage their staff to have personal collections that relate to those of the museum, others discourage this practice. In either case, it is appropriate for the museum to have a conflict-of-interest policy concerning personal collecting by staff members. This policy might stand alone, or it might appear in an employee handbook or in the museum’s code of ethics (or both). It should describe the circumstances under which it is appropriate for museum staff and volunteers to maintain personal collections that relate to the collections of the museum. Even those institutions that encourage staff members to collect in areas related to the existing museum collections need to be sure that staff understand that when personal interests and the interests of the museum conflict, the interests of the museum take precedence.
Mr. Artsy is a board member of the Big City History Museum, which has an unrivaled collection of colonial furniture. He has a fine collection of colonial chairs in which he takes great pride. He made the museum aware of his collecting interests when he became a board member and even suggested that he might bequeath a significant portion of his collection to the museum. One weekend, when Mr. Artsy is visiting an antique show in a town near his country home, he finds a chair that he believes may be a lesser known, long-missing work by one of America’s best colonial chair-makers. The work is unattributed but dated to the colonial period and, as a result, is being sold for much less than Mr. Artsy feels it is worth. He snaps up the chair and is thrilled with his discovery. Observing the museum’s conflict-of-interest policies, the next week he takes the chair to the Big City Museum, offering it to them at the purchase price should they wish to purchase it.
The chair falls within the museum’s mission, but the museum is no longer actively collecting colonial furniture. The museum does, however, have enough money in its acquisition budget for the purchase. The curator verifies that the chair may, indeed, be the long-lost gem Mr. Artsy thinks it is, but the chair’s ownership history is unclear. The museum’s registrar is consulted on the purchase. What ethical considerations should be included in her decision making? Would your answer be different if the chair had been purchased by one of the museum’s curators?
After conducting further research and consulting with other colonial furniture experts, the curator concludes that Mr. Artsy is correct; the chair was indeed created by the well-known artisan and would be a fine addition to the museum’s collection. The curator is reluctant, however, to recommend that the museum use its acquisition funds for this chair. Mr. Artsy strongly believes that the museum should own the chair and offers to sell it to the museum at an amount that is less than what he paid for it. In his decision-making process, the curator approaches the registrar for advice.
What advice might the registrar give now? Is there a conflict of interest? Is there the potential for a perceived conflict of interest?
Other potentially problematic situations can arise when a member of the governing board, staff member, or volunteer requests the use of the museum’s collections storage for their personal collections. Storing personal collections, unless they are being used for some specific museum-related educational purpose, uses museum resources inappropriately and is a conflict of interest for all involved. In addition, this situation creates a potential liability for the museum.
Institutional codes of ethics often address the appropriateness of museum staff appraising and authenticating objects. The ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums provides the following guidance, “Valuations may be made for the purposes of insurance of museum collections…. However, when the museum itself may be the beneficiary, appraisal of an object or specimen must be undertaken independently.”23 Thus, when a donor offers an object to a museum and needs to have an appraisal of the object’s value for income tax purposes, it is the donor’s responsibility to provide the appraisal and not the museum’s. To avoid a potential conflict of interest, the museum staff should not make any appraisals or even suggest the names of appraisers to the donor.
Codes of ethics issued by professional organizations and institutional codes of ethics can provide general guidance for collection stewards. Often, however, a problem is complex and involves nuances that are not addressed in a general statement of best professional practice. In these cases, there is no substitute for engaging with colleagues or museum professionals from other institutions in a dialog about a particular problem.
Even absent a real ethical dilemma, discussion about cases that raise ethical issues can be useful. The hypothetical scenarios included in this chapter can be used to spark discussion and debate within and between museums. Sharing in dialog about ethical issues related to collection stewardship can prepare registrars and collections managers to face ethical problems that arise as well as provoke reflection about conventional practice. Ethical dilemmas are not resolved by the application of hard-and-fast rules but instead through careful thought and deliberation, the separation of opinion from fact, and an understanding of an institution’s mission as well as its long-term goals and objectives. Because ethical problems can arise in virtually every activity engaged in by a museum, developing ethical skills—an ethical frame of mind—could keep many of those situations from escalating into controversies that endanger the public’s trust in museums. The process of resolving ethical dilemmas should be shared, discussed, and enjoyed for what it teaches us about our museums and their role in responding to and complying with their obligations to the public. •
1. M. Malaro, Museum Governance: Mission, Ethics, Policy (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 17.
2. American Alliance of Museums, Code of Ethics for Museums, amended 2000. Available at: https://www.aam-us.org/programs/ethics-standards-and-professional-practices/code-of-ethics-for-museums/.
3. Depending on the organizational structure and resources of a museum, the institution might hire a registrar or a collections manager. In some museums, curators may have responsibility for the physical care of collection in storage. For the purposes of this essay, the term registrar will be used to refer to the position that is responsible for developing and enforcing policies and procedures related to the acquisition, management, and disposition of collections as well as maintaining records of the collections and overseeing loans.
4. S. Yerkovich, A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics (Lanham, MD: Roman & Littlefield, 2016), xi–xii.
5. The Association of Academic Museums and Galleries’ Professional Practices for Academic Museums & Galleries provides a useful list of laws that might have an impact upon museum acquisitions. Available at: https://www.aamg-us.org/wp/best-practices/, 13–14.
6. All of the names of people and institutions in the hypothetical cases included in this chapter are fictional. The situations are composites of real and fictional circumstances and reflect actual issues faced by museums. Any resemblance to an identifiable museum is coincidental.
7. For a concise discussion of abandoned property, see H. H. Kuruvilla, A Legal Dictionary for Museum Professionals (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 3–4.
8. For accounts of some of the looting that occurred during World War II, see L. H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasure in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York: Vintage Books, 1995); F. Feliciano, The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World’s Greatest Works of Art (New York: Basic Books, 1997); and K. Akinsha and G. Kozlov, Beautiful Loot: The Soviet Plunder of Europe’s Art Treasures (New York: Random House, 1995).
9. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Principles_on_Nazi-Confiscated_Art.
10. For a more complete discussion of the ethical issues involved in the recovery of art and other objects confiscated or looted during World War II, see “Restitution, Repatriation or Retention? The Ethics of Cultural Heritage,” in Yerkovich, Practical Guide, 119–124.
11. See the International Council of Museums Code of Ethics for Museums, 6.3: “When a country or people of origin seeks the restitution of an object or specimen that can be demonstrated to have been exported or otherwise transferred in violation of the principles of international and national conventions, and shown to be part of that country’s or people’s cultural or natural heritage, the museum concerned should, if legally free to do so, take prompt and responsible steps to cooperate in its return.” Similarly, the American Alliance of Museums Code of Ethics for Museums states that “competing claims of ownership that may be asserted in connection with objects in its custody should be handled openly, seriously, responsively and with respect for the dignity of all parties involved.”
12. The Fred Jones Jr. Museum at the University of Oklahoma received considerable negative publicity surrounding its reluctance to return a painting (see Yerkovich, Practical Guide, 123), and more recently, the Leopold Museum in Austria found itself the recipient of negative publicity because the museum returned a painting to the wrong family; see David D’Arcy, “Austria returns wrong Klimt to wrong family,” The Art Newspaper, November 13, 2018. Available at: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/austria-returns-wrong-klimt-to-wrong-family.
13. For a detailed discussion of the processes of deaccessioning and disposal, see CHAPTER 3I, “Deaccession and Disposal.”
14. A sample of the provisions from major professional organizations are included here. Others may be found as sidebars in the American Alliance of Museums’ Direct Care of Collections: Ethics, Guidelines and Recommendations cited in note 16.
15. American Alliance of Museums, Code of Ethics.
16. American Alliance of Museums, Direct Care of Collections: Ethics, Guidelines and Recommendations. Available at: https://www.aam-us.org/programs/ethics-standards-and-professional-practices/direct-care-of-collections/.
17. Association of Art Museum Directors, AAMD Policy on Deaccessioning, issued June 9, 2010, amended October 2015. Available at: https://aamd.org/sites/default/files/document/AAMD%20Policy%20on%20Deaccessioning%20website_0.pdf.
18. American Association for State and Local History, AASLH Statement on Standards and Ethics. Available at: http://download.aaslh.org/AASLH+Statement+of+Standards+and+Ethics+-+Revised+2018.pdf.
19. International Council of Museums (ICOM), ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums (Paris: ICOM, 2017), 12–13.
20. Association of Academic Museums and Galleries, Professional Practices for Academic Museums & Galleries, 2018. Available at: https://www.aamg-us.org/wp/best-practices/.
21. Society of American Archivists, Guidelines for Reappraisal and Deaccessioning, issued 2012, revised 2017. Available at: https://www2.archivists.org/groups/technical-subcommittee-on-guidelines-for-reappraisal-and-deaccessioning-ts-grd/guidelines-for-reappraisal-and-deaccession.
22. See “Conflict of Interest,” in Kuruvilla, A Legal Dictionary, 29–30.
23. ICOM, Code of Ethics for Museums, 29.