Pennsylvania Declaration

The declaration aimed to distinguish the Penn Museum's collection practices from illegal antiquity trading while maintaining trust with countries where the university engaged in field research.

[1] This declaration marked the first time that a museum had taken formal steps to guarantee the ethical acquisition of materials and to deter looting and illicit antiquities trading.

In 1966, the Penn Museum bought a collection of gold believed to be from the site of Troy, now in Turkey; the seller was George Allen, a private antiquities dealer.

Bass and the rest of the curation team at the museum concluded that collecting objects of this nature would undermine the credibility and development of archaeological scholarship and threaten future field research.

[2] In 1969, UNESCO had invited Froelich Rainey, in his capacity as director of the Penn Museum, to aid in drafting the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.