Claire Hanrahan

she/her

Working title of PhD: Neutralisation Techniques Among Curators in the Acquisition of Antiquities

Institution: University of Glasgow

Full or part time: Full time

Year Commenced: 2023

PhD Supervisors: Emiline Smith and Fergus McNeill

Funding source: Self-funded

Synopsis:

The question I am answering is: how are museum curators acting within a corporate criminal structure and what creative compliance and neutralisation techniques are being used by curators in the acquiring of antiquities for their museums?

To answer this question, curators at museums in the United States (US) will be interviewed regarding their activities in acquiring objects and their views on the legal and ethical requirements they are expected to meet when acquiring objects. The antiquities acquired after 2008 in the collection of museums being studied will be looked at to see if they are meeting the ethical expectations set by the AAM and AAMD. The goal is to focus on museums across the US, including but not limited to the J. Paul Getty Museum (Getty), the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), Museum of the Bible (MOB), Tampa Museum of Art (TMA), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met). The goal of this research is to look at the way individuals behave within the structure of a corporation whose exhibiting extra-legal behaviour.

This research will be taking a mixed method approach to answer this question. The research will be a combination of field research and desk-based research. The field research will be mainly composed of interviews. This will require some content analysis of answers provided in interviews. While the desk-based research will comprise mainly of information gathered from museums online collection databases. This research will be interpreted through qualitative content analysis, looking at what is stated on the website, and quantitative, numerical breakdown of antiquities in compliance with ethical collection standards.

Keywords: Antiquities Trafficking, White-Collar Crime, Neutralisation Techniques