University of Pennsylvania (Penn Museum)

The University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Museum will launch Museums: Missions and Acquisitions Project (M2A). M2A will investigate the current policies and practices surrounding museum collections through in-depth focus groups and interviews with practitioners, directed desk research and content analysis of open sources, a representative field-wide survey, and the continued collection of data resulting from the Cultural Property Experts on Call Program (CPEOC), a partnership between the University of Pennsylvania and the U.S. Department of State. Amendment 2025: $2,017,624 in additional funds were awarded in 2025 to support expanding the CPEOC program’s network, the data it collects, the scope of its analysis, and its impact for U.S. collecting institutions and the Cultural Heritage Coordinating Committee, and to deploy the program’s research findings, its network, and its in-house expertise to identify areas of international concern and potential responses by U.S. cultural institutions and law enforcement.