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Ethics Q&A: Acquisitions 1
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July 2002
Our museum collects natural history specimens. A private collector has offered us an assortment of animal parts: shells, horns, teeth, bones, antlers, furs and skins. He has collected this material on his travels around the world over many years.
We are interested in taking some items, which are spectacular, and come fully documented. But we are uneasy about the quality of others and the sketchy documentation around them. It is a very large collection and in resource terms we are also worried about biting off more than we can chew.
Our potential donor is anxious for us to take the whole collection before he emigrates in three months time to spend his retirement abroad. He says that if we cannot make a quick decision he will sell what he can and offer the rest of the collection to another institution. What is your advice?
One of the skills of a good curator is being able to distinguish an opportunity that is too good to miss from a deal that is probably best avoided. Explain to the private collector that you cannot make a hasty decision that might compromise one of your professions' key ethical principles, which requires museums to "acquire items honestly and responsibly" (5).
Ethics apart, for your museum to acquire legal title, the collector needs to provide documentary evidence that all the specimens have been collected legally, without infringing either the national laws in countries of origin or international regulation such as CITES. Unless the collector can demonstrate to your satisfaction that he has met all relevant legal requirements you should not accept his offer.
If there are no legal impediments you must refer to your museum's acquisition policy and assess your museum's capacity to provide the necessary standard of curatorial support for this material in the long term. If you are unsure that your museum has the resources to maintain the collection, then it is better to refer your would-be benefactor to a museum that can, or failing that, to accept that the specimens will be sold. Explore with the collector the possibility of making selective acquisitions from the collection that fit with your policies and mission.
Be clear about the purpose that his specimens would serve in your museum. Ask for any field notes and photographs from collecting locations that help to contextualise the material. These scientific responsibilities are part of your duty to "support the protection of natural and human environments", another key value in the Code of Ethics (8).
Do not be rushed into making a hasty decision. Of course you have a duty of care to the collector, so that he understands the museum's agenda in your negotiations. But this is subordinate to your wider social obligations. It is therefore important that you work to the museum's timetable and not to anyone else's, so that you can apply due diligence as a socially and environmentally responsible public body.
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