Editors’ Page: AIA: Senator Moynihan Supports Antiquities Collector as Payoff for Campaign Contributions

The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA), in its continuing campaign to vilify antiquities collectors and dealers as a means of eliminating archaeological looting, has now drawn a bead on Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). AIA president Nancy Wilkie has accused the senator of “aiding unethical antiquities dealers” and, as a payoff for campaign contributions, endorsing the appointment of antiquities collector Shelby White to a presidential committee concerned with preventing the importation of looted artifacts. In a column entitled “Moynihan’s Mischief” in the November/December 2000 issue of Archaeology, the AIA’s official magazine, Wilkie describes White as “a voracious collector of […]