New acquisition policy for the Metropolitan Museum of Art

It seems that Lord Renfrew's 2009 SAFE lecture has prompted a response from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. SAFE has released the news that the MMA will be accepting the AAMD's guidelines; Elyse Topalian, Vice President for Communications at the MMA sent an email to SAFE on January 2 stating that:

in June 2008 the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art accepted the Association of Art Museum Directors's June 4, 2008 Guidelines on the Acquisition of Archaeological Materials and Ancient Art, and on November 12, 2008, the Board of Trustees adopted a revised Collections Management Policy incorporating those guidelines.

SAFE has posted details of the new MMA policy. This includes the statement:

The Museum normally shall not acquire a work unless provenance research substantiates that the work was outside its country of probable modern discovery before 1970 or was legally exported from its probable country of modern discovery after 1970.

Lee Rosenbaum had indicated that such an announcement would be forthcoming back in June 2008.

This is a major step forward and addresses earlier concerns.