Ethics

In the late 1970s a hoard of Roman coins was found in our locality. It was declared Treasure Trove and our museum was given the opportunity to buy it.

The hoard was too expensive to buy in its entirety so we split the purchase with a museum in a neighbouring locality. We put our coins on display. We would now like to put the entire hoard on permanent display here, at one site.

The coins at the neighbouring museum are currently in store. That museum does not have an archaeology display which can present those coins in a way that puts them into a proper scholarly context, yet our request for their return has been declined. How should we respond?


It is not helpful to begin by passing judgment on the relevance of items to another museum. There were, presumably, good reasons for your neighbours to be party to the original split purchase and there are, one would expect, also good reasons for their portion of the hoard to be kept at its present location.

Your best approach is to make polite enquiries to determine your neighbour's reasons rather than assume mere intransigence on their part. By far the most productive way forward in disputes of this nature is for the parties involved to engage in constructive dialogue, with the aim of maximizing the overall benefit to both museums' varied audiences.

Questions of ownership should be subordinate, ethically, to the priorities of items remaining in the public domain at a location where they will be most accessible and where they can best be safeguarded.

It would, of course, be perfectly legitimate, as part of a long-term collections management policy for one museum to transfer items to another for reasons of care, context or access. This is not to say, however, that a museum is obliged to make such a transfer at your request.

Perhaps the best resolution to your problem would be for you and your neighbour to agree some form of medium to long-term loan arrangement. There may be items in your collection with which you could reciprocate.