Ethical Issues in Art History Assignment

Ethical Issues in Art History Assignment Goal

For this assignment on Ethical Issues in Art History, you are asked to write a five-page paper that analyzes an ethical situation and proposes a solution. It should be emphasized that the assignment is not about finding the “correct” answer, but rather your task is to demonstrate a sound process of decision-making supported by the identification of principles and standards, evidence, reasoning, and professional standards.

Ethical issues in art history arise in a variety of ways: in the design of curriculum, in the choice of issues and objects to research or present in a class, to the collection and display of objects in a museum. The best means for addressing an ethical problem, however, is rarely clear-cut or easy, so developing an ethical decision-making process, as required by this this paper, is essential.

 Ethical Issues in Art History Format

For this assignment, you are to imagine yourself as the newly appointed Curator of Collections for the University of M. There are seven Mesoamerican terracotta  that have been housed in the University Archives, but have not been accessioned as part of the University’s Art Collection. Since the Archivist is not trained or experienced in the handling of art work, she has asked to transfer responsibility for the objects to you, so that they might become part of the University Art Collection. Before that can take place, however, the works would have to be accessioned into the university’s permanent art collection, which is defined as follows in its collection development policies:

Permanent Collections: These are works that have cultural, historical, public, or financial value that the University commits to maintaining for the future. Works in the permanent collections are accessioned, i.e., recorded and processed as an addition to the permanent collection. Accessioned or deaccessioned works should be reviewed by the appropriate group or University administrator before being processed.

As these are tremendously old works that come from outside of the U.S., and, quite likely, an archaeological context—not to mention that they come from a country (countries?) with stringent national patrimony laws—you will need to investigate the provenance of the works before making a recommendation to the accessions committee and university administrators as to what should be done with them.

The facts regarding the materials are incomplete, but what has been found compiled in the document:

Ethics analysis rubric