A Penn Cultural Heritage Center initiative aims to bolster ethical museum collecting.
“This has been a long time coming.”
So says Brian Daniels, the director of research and programs for the Penn Museum’s Penn Cultural Heritage Center (PennCHC), which is undertaking a three-year national study that, per an October announcement, will “create an evidence-based framework for the future collecting decisions of US museums.”
The new effort—called the Museums: Missions and Acquisitions (M2A) Project and funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services—aims to identify the ways in which museums acquire objects and create a guide for ethical collecting practices and accountability.
“What we’re really trying to understand is, OK, what are museums doing at these spaces?” says Daniels, who serves as the M2A Project’s principal investigator. “And if there are barriers to more ethical futures, what do they look like? So we can offer recommendations to overcome them.”
Many museums already adhere to some standards for collecting artifacts and objects, such as the International Council of Museums’ Code of Ethics, although this is currently being revised. American museums have an additional code from the American Alliance of Museums. But the M2A is trying to go beyond just a set of rules or guidelines, with Daniels noting that the kind of information they’re collecting “has never been brought together on this scale and made available to museum leadership and policymakers.”
“One of the biggest challenges” of the project, Daniels says, will be coaxing museums to be transparent about their current practices. Art and antiquities markets are often opaque. But through the Cultural Property Experts on Call (CPEOC) Program—which is a partnership between PennCHC and the US Department of State’s Cultural Heritage Coordinating Committee that works to protect international cultural property from looting, theft, and trafficking—M2A researchers have already built relationships with museum leaders and other experts in the field. Because of these established connections, Daniels says that he’s “feeling very confident that we’re actually going to be able to kind of overcome the reticence to talk about some of the challenges and problems over the past 25 years.”
Researchers will examine more than 450 American museums that have historically held cultural objects—such as art, archaeological, and ethnographic collections. By 2027, the PennCHC will share the M2A Project’s findings through a “state-of-the-field report that synthesizes the current collecting practices and spotlights innovative case studies across the US museum sector,” according to the announcement, which notes that the project “comes at a critical moment as museums across the country grapple with the ownership histories of their collections and as the illegal trafficking of objects places global cultural heritage at increasing risk.” The report is intended to help museum staff at all levels, as well as cultural leaders, trustees, grant makers, and others.
“We’re really trying to shift the needle on museum practice by pointing to directions that museums can go,” says Daniels, who notes that the Penn Museum is “known internationally for its strong stance on the ethical acquisition of cultural heritage.”
“We’re also really trying to galvanize philanthropy and other donors in the space toward ways that they may be able to support these kinds of museum transformations,” he adds. —Hannah Chang C’27
