Froelich Gladstone Rainey (June 18, 1907 – October 11, 1992) was an American anthropologist and Director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology from 1947 to 1977.
Under his leadership, the Penn Museum announced the Pennsylvania Declaration, ending the purchase system of acquiring antiquities and artifacts that had, in practice, encouraged looting from historical sites.
[1][2] He began his career in education teaching English in the Philippines, his destination after searching for opportunities after the onset of the Great Depression.
In 1944 he was assigned to Robert Murphy's staff for the Allied Control Commission for Occupied Germany, part of the Foreign Services.
[5] His directorship saw Museum scholars explore the globe on more than two hundred trips, including excursions to Thailand, Guatemala, and Greece.
In 1951, the show won the Peabody Award, a prize originally given for invigorating storytelling in radio and television, highlighting its importance and popularity soon after it came on air.
[1] In 1939 Rainey joined forces with Helge Larsen on an expedition to Point Hope, Alaska, a place where in 1920 Knud Rasmussen found what he "thought to be the most interesting site in the American Arctic".
[1][12] In 1947 he published The Whale Hunters of Tigara, an ethnography that displayed the importance of combining ethnographic and archaeological research and ultimately led to improved relationship and friendship with the Eskimos of Point Hope.
Later this contributed to helping anthropologist such as James VanStone, Don Foote, Ernest Burch, and Douglas Anderson continue the research.
[16] The declaration, which committed the Penn Museum to require that all acquisitions be procured in a legal manner with proof of provenance, anticipated UNESCO's issue later in 1970 of the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.