The past year was another challenging one for collectors, the trade and museums. Despite the Trump Administration’s “America First” rhetoric, repatriation on demand as a “soft power” measure pitched as a means to address “past wrongs” remains the default position of the US State Department, law enforcement, and increasingly US Museums.
US Import Restrictions under the Cultural Property
Implementation Act
The Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA) authorizes the executive branch to enter into cultural property agreements or CPAs with foreign governments conditioned on specific findings. In all but emergency situations, these must be specific findings that the cultural heritage of a specific country is in danger, that the country has engaged in “self-help” measures, that any action is being taken in concert with other market nations, that there are no less drastic remedies available, and that the any action is consistent with the interchange of cultural property for scientific and educational purposes. 19 U.S.C. § 2602 (a) (1). In “emergency” situations, these requirements are relaxed, but the material to be restricted must either be a “newly discovered type” of “importance,” site specific, or there is a "crisis" threatening the record of a particular culture that can be addressed temporarily by import restrictions. Id. § 2603. Once a CPA is signed, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CPB) prepares “designated lists” of objects subject to repatriation that are published in the Federal Register. Id. § 2604.
Over time, however, the required findings designed to place significant
substantive and procedural constraints on executive authority have devolved
into a “check the box” exercise, and mission creep has repurposed and vastly
expanded the program. What thus started as a forward looking, focused
effort to protect archaeological sites and artifacts of cultural significance abroad
has now morphed into a comprehensive program to “claw back” and repatriate most
archaeological and ethnological objects made or found in a given country from
prehistory to the early 20th century. While the number of seizures under the CPIA are
impossible to determine because CBP has consistently stonewalled FOIA requests,
they probably number in the thousands of objects with far more to come as AI is
increasingly used to sift through shipments.
Most significantly for the sheer number of American citizens
impacted, restrictions now typically extend to common items like historical
coins. Generally speaking, such coins circulated
regionally and internationally as items of commerce in the past and are widely
collected today. Yet, under current enforcement guidelines, CBP can “assume” that any coins of a type that
appears on multiple, overlapping designated lists are subject to detention,
seizure and forfeiture.
In contrast, a fair reading of the CPIA instead suggests
that there must at least probable cause that “designated material” was “first
discovered within and is subject to export control by, the State Party” and that it was exported after the effective
date of any governing regulations before it can be seized, forfeited and
repatriated. Id. §§ 2601, 2606.
However, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an effort at judicial
review, holding instead that the issue was a “foreign policy” matter beyond full
judicial review.
As a result, import restrictions under the CPIA are not
applied solely to illegal exports made after the effective date of regulations
under § 2606, but rather are now enforced far more broadly against
any import into the US made after the effective date of regulations, i.e., as
an embargo, not targeted, prospective import restrictions. Such
enforcement damages legitimate trade, particularly with Europe, because many
common artifacts like coins simply lack the documentation necessary to take advantage
of a limited “safe harbor” provision for artifacts proven to be outside the
country with a CPA before the effective date of any implementing regulations.
Despite significant “disruption” elsewhere, the “soft power”
status quo remains alive and well at the Trump State Department when it comes
to CPAs and import restrictions on cultural goods. Just in 2025, the Trump II administration
implemented Biden era requests for import restrictions on virtually all
archaeological and ethnological objects for India, war-torn Lebanon, and Uzbekistan
with renewals being considered for Taliban
Afghanistan, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Italy, Morocco, and Turkey, and new CPAs
being considered for Cameroon and Communist Vietnam.
Of particular concern for coin collectors is the expansion
of import restrictions to widely collected Roman Imperial coins. Despite the tiny percentages of such coins
found in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ukraine, the Biden Administration added Roman
Imperial coins to “designated lists” for such countries. Moreover, in 2025, the
State Department held CPAC hearings to consider renewals of current CPAs with
Italy and Turkey, which could be an excuse to expand current import
restrictions to include such coins.
In mid-December, the State Department again renewed its
current CPA with Italy, but without any of the past fanfare. That renewal means that another 5 years of import
restrictions must be announced on or before the current ones expire on January
19, 2026. That makes it likely that the
Trump II Administration will at least extend current Obama era import
restrictions on ancient Greek, Punic and early Roman Republican era coins as
part of the renewal. What remains
uncertain is whether the Trump Administration will continue the Biden
Administration’s efforts to place new restrictions on widely collected Roman
Imperial coins. During a State
Department Cultural Property Advisory Committee hearing in May, CPO and other
representatives of collectors and the trade opposed any such move, citing scholarly
evidence proving that such coins circulated in quantity from Britain to Sri
Lanka, with less than 6% of the total
number of validated Roman Imperial coin hoards comprising almost 7 million
coins being found in Italy, Under the
circumstances, it should be impossible for CBP to assume that any particular Roman Imperial coin was found in and
illicitly exported from Italy as of the effective date of any regulations, but
it remains to be seen if undisputed scholarly evidence matters more than “soft power.”
More evidence that the status quo has not changed can be
seen in the lack of turnover in the Cultural Property Advisory Committee (CPAC)
and continued State Department funding of archaeological advocacy groups,
notably the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR). CPAC
is an advisory committee that makes recommendations to the Executive Branch
about entering into and renewing CPAs.
Its current membership, which is to represent the separate interests of
the public, the trade, archaeology and anthropology, and museums, remains
completely comprised of Biden appointees. Not surprisingly, based on their interactions
with representatives of collectors and the trade at CPAC meetings, most, if not
all these Biden political appointees seem to share the Biden State Department’s
views that prioritized CPAs and “soft power” over protecting American collectors and fostering legitimate trade.
State Department funding of ASOR and related archaeological
groups is largely directed at conservation programs within countries with CPAs,
but part of that funding has also been used to draft reports to help justify
more controversial CPAs, like the one with one of the armed factions running Libya. There is a built-in conflict of interest here
because these groups represent archaeologists who can only excavate in these
countries with the permission of their governments. As a result, these groups are reluctant to
criticize local corruption and mismanagement or laws that declare state
ownership and/or control of most anything “old.” Nor does the State Department have any
incentive to rein in such practices. The
selective “evidence” these groups provide at CPAC hearings helps the State
Department bureaucracy “check the box” on the CPIA’s statutory requirements and
hence justify further “soft power” CPAs.
In the past under Biden,
this “collaboration” went so far as to bypass CPAC review and public
comment for the renewal of a CPA with a Saudi supported faction in Yemen. Instead, the new CPA was signed at an
“invitation only” event sponsored by the Antiquities Coalition, another
advocacy group that has received substantial past State Department funding.
With the Trump II Administration going into its second year,
there remains only a fleeting hope that there will be a major “rethink” of the
State Departments prioritizing “soft power” over the private property and due
process rights of American collectors. no matter how damaging current import
restrictions are to American collectors and lawful cultural exchange, primarily
with Europe.
Threats of Criminal Liability to Force Repatriations
Even more concerning than ever more expansive CPAs are the
hard ball tactics of Alvin Bragg’s Manhattan District Attorney’s office (the
same office that prosecuted President Trump for falsifying business records). Matthew
Bogdanos, an assistant DA in that office, has gained notoriety by utilizing
threats of criminal prosecutions under New York law to “encourage” museums and
collectors into “voluntarily” repatriating objects to countries as diverse as Communist
China, Italy, Greece, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Libya, and Turkey. As far
as Bragg and Bogdanos are concerned, any object claimed by a foreign country
under its own laws will also be treated as “stolen” under New York law even if
it left that country decades ago. The
object need not be located in New York today as long as the artifact itself or any
transaction related to that artifact, passed through New York at some point in
the past. Furthermore, limitations periods do not apply because each new day of possession a “stolen”
object starts the statute of limitations running over again.
Forced repatriations of bronze statues traced to
a Roman Imperial era sanctuary in Boubon, Turkey, illustrate some of these
issues. The statues in question apparently
were illegally excavated by townspeople and smuggled from Turkey in the 1960s
before the 1970 UNESCO Convention provided a legal basis for repatriation. These statues were openly sold and displayed for
decades until archaeological activists gained Bogdanos’ ear after which he demanded
that the Cleveland Museum of Art repatriate one of them prominently displayed
in its collection. The Museum
initially contested the claim but reconsidered once scholarly evidence
suggested that the statue was indeed from Turkey.
Since then, Bogdanos, with the help of archaeological activists,
has been tracking down other statues from the same group. Most recently, Bogdanos made a claim for
another statue from a collector in
California. That collector initially fought
the claim by bringing his own case in federal court only to dismiss it and capitulate
after being indicted by the Manhattan DA’s office. Obviously, any rational collector would give
up whatever the merit of their own legal arguments given the threat of jail
time.
Once again, the narrative planted in the press only told part
of the story. While the collector
apparently capitulated after evidence was disclosed that he knew it was smuggled
from Turkey, important questions about the Manhattan DA’s jurisdiction over the
object that had been in California for decades remained. Another important issue here is that while
Turkey’s authoritarian government likes to paint itself as a historic “victim,”
reality is quite different. Ottoman
Turkey was an Imperial Power that enriched its own palaces with cultural goods
taken from its oppressed, foreign subjects.
Moreover, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey of today has similar Imperialist pretentions. The Turkish government has
encouraged looting and destruction of cultural heritage abroad in places like
Cyprus and Syria. It has converted
historic churches like Hagia Sophia into mosques. It has also encouraged treasure hunting in
former Christian and Jewish areas. This
should raise a basic question. Should
Turkey really benefit from repatriations of objects removed decades ago and
openly displayed since when it has such “unclean hands” today?
Voluntary Repatriations from Museums
The past year was also another banner year for voluntary repatriation
from museums. While such voluntary repatriations
may make sense in given circumstances (particularly when they relate to indigenous communities or individual victims), the problem is that returns made on
“ethical considerations” to nation states or other governmental powers are all too often based on a selective review of the
facts.
Museums are public institutions and Museum Trustees have a
duty to retain and preserve the objects in their collections for the public. After all, most objects in museum collections
were donated by private citizens with the expectation that they would be
displayed for the American public, not repatriated abroad.
Some years ago, activists with the the Archaeological Institute of America helped convince the Association of Art Museum Directors to adopt new acquisition
guidelines. These state that member
museums should not acquire an object 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. At the time, this 1970 date was
pitched as a safe harbor for current and future acquisitions. However, as we have seen, all that has gone down the Orwellian memory
hole as far as the Manhattan DA is concerned.
Moreover, despite the Trump Administration’s “war on woke” at museums, the
1970 Rule has increasingly been replaced with a much more subjective one calling for
“ethical returns." Such ethical considerations are increasingly being applied,
particularly where it is alleged that the object in question is the product of
“colonial exploitation.”
Ethics are fine but “provenance research” must tell the
whole story, not simply half-truths designed to justify repatriation. Recent repatriations from the Smithsonian and
other Institutions such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, of Benin “bronzes”
come to mind. The return of these
objects to the Oba, a traditional ruler in Nigeria, has been justified as
righting the colonialist wrongs perpetrated during a punitive British colonial military
expedition that took the bronzes as war prizes. What is all
too often left unsaid, however, is that the Oba’s own wealth derived from the
slave trade and that the bronzes themselves are made up of melted “manilla”
currency used to buy and sell slaves. Shouldn’t that be relevant to repatriation
decisions, particularly when it deprives Americans who descended from slaves
taken by the Oba of tangible evidence of their own undeniable victimization?
Legislative Initiatives
It is not all gloom and doom, at least for coin collectors. Last term, Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne
(R-Texas) introduced a technical correction to the CPIA, H.R. 7865, towards the
end of the 118th Congress in April 2024. This same bill was reintroduced in the 119th
Congress on January 21, 2025, as H.R. 595. The bill currently has fourteen
cosponsors, including ten Republicans and four Democrats, making it
bipartisan.
The legislation’s “safe harbor” language allows for the
import of coin types on “designated lists” with evidence the numismatic
material was acquired lawfully, is of a known type, and is not the direct
product of illicit excavations within a UNESCO State Party after the effective date of
any import restrictions on coins. The hope is that the bill will be attached to
a larger trade bill that is typically passed each Congress. However, there is some concern that given the
month-long government shutdown, there will be no such legislation this year,
and it will be necessary to try to get H.R. 595 reintroduced again next
term.
While H.R. 595 would help protect the legitimate trade in
collector’s coins, far more ambitious legislation also is necessary to rein in
the State Department and Manhattan DA’s office and protect the due process and
private property rights of collectors.
For Further Reading
For coverage of 2025 CPAs, CPAC hearings and import restrictions
Under the CPIA, see the Cultural Property Observer Blog, Blog Archive
2025, available at https://culturalpropertyobserver.blogspot.com/2025/
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For a discussion of the ACCG’s past effort to seek judicial
review of the decision to impose import restrictions on coins, see An Epic
Battle: U.S. v. 3 Knife-Shaped Coins, Cultural Property News (October 15,
2018), available at https://culturalpropertynews.org/an-epic-battle-u-s-v-3-knife-shaped-coins/
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For a discussion of State Department funding of
archaeological advocacy groups, see Peter K. Tompa, Careful Collector
No. 22-Your Tax Dollars at Work, Cultural Property News (December 28,
2023), available at https://culturalpropertynews.org/careful-collector-no-22-your-tax-dollars-at-work/
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For a FOIA release related to the “invitation only event” to
sign a CPA with a Yemeni faction, see The ACCG has secured important
evidence about the extent of cooperation between the State Department and
archaeological advocacy groups, most notably, the mysteriously well-funded
Antiquities Coalition, Ancient Coin Collectors Guild Website, News,
available at https://www.accguild.org/news/13420183
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For more on the Manhattan DA’s repatriation of a statue to
Turkey, see Tom Mashberg and Grahm Bowley, Collector Surrenders ‘Nude
Emperor’ Statue Identified as Looted, The New York Times (December 8, 2025),
available at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/arts/design/nude-emperor-statue-met-marble-head-turkey.html#:~:text=But%20the%20Manhattan%20district%20attorney's,it%20too%20had%20been%20looted.
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For more about the 1970 Rule, see 2013 Guidelines on the
Acquisition of Archaeological Material and Ancient Art, Association of Art
Museum Directors Website, Standards and Practices (January 29, 2013), available
at https://aamd.org/standards-and-practices
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For more about the Smithsonian’s ethical returns policy, see
Shared Stewardship and Ethical Returns Policy, see Smithsonian National Museum
of Asian Art, available at https://asia.si.edu/explore-art-culture/collections/collections-policies/shared-stewardship-and-ethical-returns-policy/
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For more about the legal complexities of the return of the
Benin bronzes based on “ethical considerations,” see Channa M. Norman, Benin
Bronzes Highlight Complexity of Repatriation Decisions, Shook, Hardy and
Bacon Website, available at https://www.shb.com/intelligence/publications/2025/q4/norman-benin-bronzes
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For more about H.R. 595, see HR 7865, a Bill to
Facilitate the Lawful Trade in Collectors' Coins, Reintroduced as HR 595, Ancient
Coin Collectors Guild Website, News, available at https://www.accguild.org/news/13463512
(last visited January 2, 2026).
For more about the legislative reform needed, see Peter
K. Tompa, Opinion: It’s Time to Make Collecting Great Again! Cultural Property News (April 3, 2025),
available at https://culturalpropertynews.org/time-to-make-collecting-great-again/
(last visited January 2, 2026).
