• January 8, 2026 | 8:00 AM - 10:30 AM
• Continental 6, Ballroom Level

1I: Perilous Provenance: Museums, Patrimony, and the 1970 UNESCO Convention (Workshop)

Click or tap here to join the meeting virtually

Sponsored by:
Penn Cultural Heritage Center

Organizers:
Alyssa C. Thiel, Penn Cultural Heritage Center and Brian I. Daniels, University of Pennsylvania, Penn Cultural Heritage Center

Panelists:
Patty Gerstenblith, Center for Art, Museum & Cultural Heritage Law, María José Buerba Romero Valdés, Office of the Legal Adviser, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Virginia Hermann, U.S. Department of State, and Daniel Healey, Worcester Art Museum

Overview Statement:
In recent years, high-profile law enforcement seizures of cultural property from United States museums have led to significant financial loss, negative public opinion, and a loss of trust in the museum sector itself. The basis for these seizures generally lies in the violation of an object’s country of origin’s patrimony law and its resulting interpretation as stolen property under US law. However, many leading American museums and their professional associations uphold the date of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit, Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, rather than that of the country of origin’s patrimony law, as a benchmark when considering the provenance of a new acquisition.

Although museums have adopted 1970 standard to avoid legal risk, has it instead opened them up to liability? Should museums’ acquisitions and collections management policies continue to require provenance (collecting history) based on the 1970 UNESCO Convention, or, at a minimum, provenance that can be traced to the date of the patrimony law in each object’s respective country of origin?

This workshop creates an opportunity for colleagues to share their expertise and insights on the complicated legal landscape of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, international law, and patrimony laws as they directly affect acquisitions, provenance research, and other collections management activities at US museums. The goal of this workshop is to provide an in-depth look at the current professional standards and institutional policies of museum collecting; the differences between law, soft law, and ethics as they apply to cultural property ownership; and initiatives to update museum policies and standards to meet their ethical and legal obligations.