Brian Kimsey-Hickman wrote:
>
> I have an interesting ethical question that I would encourage
> people to respond on.
>
> Let say a commercial enterprise is involved in excavating
> archaeological sites not necessarily illegally but primarily for
> economic profit.  A particular site is selected by this
> enterprise and is excavated.  Lets assume, for this discussion,
> that the site is examined in a systematic fashion and recorded
> properly.  At the conclusion of the excavation a significant
> majority of the objects are sold commercially.  However, some are
> held back and placed in a traveling exhibit that is quite
> breathtaking. Your institution is approach as a venue for this
> exhibit.  Would you have any ethical concerns or would you except
> this exhibit without reservations?
>
> Brian Kimsey-Hickman

Dear Brian

We did have a problem similar to this scenario a few years ago.  We had
signed a contract with another museum to bring in an exhibit on
underwater exploration, most of the exhibit dealt with non-archaeolocial
material, it was the technological and biological aspects of the exhibit
which we were interested in. We should have caught the part about the
objects and a company which had asked to be an additional insured - they
owned the objects- none of this set off any alarms, we just assumed these
were all museum objects, just another organization.

We found out about our error in a round about way, and decided not to
exhibit the artifacts with this exhibit. We told the Museum which we had
the contract with that we did not feel we could, in good conscience, show
this material. They were actually understanding and gave no objection to
our leaving this out - they pointed out that the material in question was
not illegally collected, which was true - but it would have been a few
miles closer to shore.

We were very lucky to have the National Park Service Submerged Cultural
Resources Unit in Santa Fe, they educated us and our public on this
matter through educational programing, lending underwater photos, and
doing a live dive which was transmitted back to the museum for our
visitors.

All in all we learned to never make assumptions in contracts -ask ask
ask, and in the end by leaving out that section we got a more exciting
program.

It was also a good opportunity in our museum to examine ethical issues,
and of course not everyone agreed with the decision. I'll be interested
in how others see this.


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-----------------------------------
Suzanne Cowan
Chief of Collections
New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science
1801 Mountain Rd NW
Albuquerque, NM 87104
(505) 841-2867  FAX (505) 841-2866
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