 |
| Anne Pasternak, Brooklyn Museum Director (Photo: Erin Baiano for the New York Times) |
A few weeks ago, I read about six curators at the
Canadian Museum of History who expressed ethical concerns about the purchase of
artifacts recovered from the wreck of the
Empress of Ireland. These concerns included the manner in which the artifacts
were collected and the fact that the museum paid for artifacts from an
archeological site. Not only were their objections dismissed, but the museum hired a lawyer
and threatened them with legal action, were they to repeat their concerns to
anyone else. According to the museum President and CEO Mark O’Neill, “Internal
discussions like this are normal, and frankly, making them public is not”
(read more). This statement left me thinking which would be the ‘OK’ subjects to
discuss in public and, frankly, how come the conditions of acquiring objects
for the museum collections is not one of them.
