Guest Editorial Introduction

Recent Developments in the International Exchange of Museum Collections The Archaeological Heritage and Ethics column of the Journal of Field Archaeology again welcomes Patty Gerstenblith’s annual summary of legal issues related to cultural heritage. As we shall see, the past year witnessed a legal challenge to U.S. import restrictions on ancient coins under the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA) and perhaps the first substantive test of the U.S. commitment to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. It also saw the appointment of our author as the chair of President Barack Obama’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC), the deliberative body that makes recommendations regarding bilateral agreements between the United States and foreign governments on import restrictions related to the protection of cultural property under the CPIA. Given her new responsibilities, it is important to note that the views Gerstenblith shares here are her own and not necessarily those of CPAC or the U.S. Government. At present, much of the attention surrounding archaeology and the law involves the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property and its implementation in the United States under the CPIA. The reasons are twofold. This international agreement has long been cited as the ethical benchmark for collecting museums to follow when considering making purchases on the antiquities market. It also has promised some limited means for discouraging the international trade in looted archaeological material through import controls among State Parties. In the United States, the CPIA provides for import restrictions on a ‘‘designated list’’ of commonly pillaged archaeological and ethnological material. This list forms ‘‘Article I’’ of a negotiated bilateral agreement, or memorandum of understanding (MOU), with a foreign government. As Gerstenblith has observed in the past, these agreements do more than intervene in the illicit trafficking of cultural property. They contain provisions in an ‘‘Article II’’ that create formal avenues for introducing and encouraging specific kinds of cultural policies and initiatives. Over the years, these have included the construction of a new national museum in El Salvador (Magness-Gardiner 2004), a licit international trade in Chinese artifacts (Luke and Kersel 2010), and the use of foreign archaeological institutes and schools in fostering intercultural dialogue (Luke and Kersel 2011). Among the cultural policies championed in Article II, the centerpiece has been the encouragement of long-term loans for museum collections. The rationale behind this initiative is couched mainly in economic terms, although it has significant bearing on cultural exchange and diplomacy. If collecting museums could acquire artifacts through diplomatic channels rather than purchasing them, then there might be less demand for looted archaeological material and a reduced incentive for institutions to act as participants in the international art market. The guidelines and the present model for long-term loans were products of negotiations between the U.S. Department of State and the Italian Ministry of Culture and included as part of Article II of a 2001 MOU (Magness-Gardiner 2003). Although under Italian law artifacts can only be loaned to foreign institutions for a one-year term when intended for display, the MOU established that loans for longer periods could be considered when there was a significant research or educational component involved. This situation highlighted the conditions necessary for creating a policy favoring long-term loans of cultural property that could be incorporated into Article II of any MOU under the CPIA. As Luke (2012: 12–13) recently observed, if greater numbers of artifacts can be identified in foreign museums’ inventories and registries, then more loans may be contemplated under an MOU and for increasingly longer durations. The MOUs renewed or entered in 2011 demonstrate the different stages of such an overarching policy. In the case of Colombia, the MOU calls on the country to use its ‘‘best efforts’’ to permit the exchange of archaeological and ethnological materials without discussing the length of the loan. However, there is much greater specificity when the MOU obliges Colombia to ‘‘register and inventory cultural property, with particular attention to the ecclesiastical materials in the stewardship of the