As Isil destroys ancient temples and monuments across Syria and Iraq, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) is encouraging US museums to act as safe havens for threatened works of art in the collections of governments, museums and private individuals in conflict zones. But there are concerns that looted artefacts could be among the works sent to the US.
New guidelines published by the AAMD in October provide a framework for museums to house objects that are at risk due to conflict, terrorism or natural disasters at the owner’s request until it is safe to return them. The objects will be treated as loans and registered on the AAMD’s website. The owners are required to pay the shipping costs.
The guidelines are “quite possibly one of the most important developments in the field of cultural heritage policy in recent years”, says Brian Daniels, the director of research at the Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Pennsylvania. By emphasising that these are loans rather than purchases, the protocols represent “a sea change” for the AAMD, which has 240 members in North America. Julian Raby, a member of the AAMD’s antiquities task force and the director of the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, DC, stresses that the guidelines “are based firmly on the principle of return”.
But Daniels and other heritage professionals worry that, as the protocols let institutions take loans from foreign individuals and organisations as well as from museums and governments, they might result in the unknowing acceptance of looted objects. The concern is that illicit artefacts with false provenances could enter museums via private owners, encouraging the illegal antiquities trade.
A spokeswoman for the AAMD stresses that the protocols advise museums to “exercise caution” so as not to “violate the rights of lawful owners or cause the museum to be involved in any legal or unethical activity”.
Patty Gerstenblith, the director of DePaul University’s Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law in Chicago, says: “I would have preferred museums to have taken a stand above the law and said that if there is a chance these objects were looted, we won’t take them.”
Exactly how museums might return works is also unclear. “If there is a change of government in the conflict area that results in a chilling of diplomatic relations, returning the property later could become complicated,” says Frank Lord, a partner at Herrick Feinstein law firm in New York. Using the Russian Revolution as an example, he asks: “What if the new government has completely different ideas about private property?”
Maxwell Anderson, the former chair of the AAMD’s antiquities task force, says the protocols will “help rescue looted works that might otherwise disappear into the art market”. James Cuno, the president of Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Trust, calls the measure “a step in the right direction”, but says that its success ultimately hinges on foreign institutions and nation states’ commitment to protect cultural property.
Some sceptics say that flawed guidelines are better than nothing when the threat to the world’s heritage is at an all-time high. “I’m happy to take three-quarters of a loaf as a policy win any day when it advances heritage preservation,” Daniels says. “Any win for the heritage community is so terribly difficult.”
Law to lend a hand The Association of Art Museum Directors’ protocols could work in concert with a bill snaking its way through the US Congress to restrict the import of archaeological and ethnographic objects from Syria. The Protect and Preserve International Cultural Property Act targets works “unlawfully removed from Syria on or after 15 March 2011”. It gives the US president power to waive restrictions if the owners or custodians wish to place the objects temporarily in the US for safekeeping. “I hope the timing of the protocols will give weight and support to the proposed bill,” says James Cuno, the president of the Getty.