Recent reports

Prosecutors in Rome recently began the criminal trial against Marion True, a former curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Robert Hecht, Jr., an American art dealer based in Paris. True faces trial for receiving stolen objects and for conspiracy to smuggle. Hecht is also charged. Both maintain their innocence. A third co-defendant, antiquities dealer Giacomo Medici, was convicted on December 13, 2004 of receiving and exporting stolen antiquities. The court sentenced Medici to 10 years in prison and fined him more than 10 million euros. Medici is currently appealing.

As a result of the criminal investigation, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and other news outlets report that Italian authorities have identified scores of allegedly looted antiquities acquired by major museums. These museums reportedly include New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Toledo Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

SAFE created SAFE Tours to inform the public about the illicit antiquities trade and to show how deficient museum acquisition practices diminish our knowledge of history and imperil our shared cultural heritage. In the wake of the current criminal investigation and resulting prosecutions, SAFE encourages members of the public and attorneys general in the United States--who serve as caretakers of non-profit institutions, which include museums--to ask museums to discuss their acquisition policies and procedures.

Many museums publish acquisition policies, and they abide by standards such as the International Council of Museums Code of Ethics for Museums. As non-profit corporations, museums also follow state charitable trust laws, which are designed to instill public confidence. SAFE believes that members of museums should begin asking questions of the institutions they support to find out if the museum's acquisition and accession policies diverge from commonly accepted ethical standards. SAFE also believes that attorneys general in the USA have a responsibility to guarantee that museums formed for charitable purposes operate in conformity with the public interest.

The best museums use due diligence and good faith to: