It's early spring in Iowa 2019. The Herbert Hoover presidential library in

museum is preparing for a new exhibition. Hoover had spent some time in the

Middle East and Egypt and also it was a classicist so the thinking was won't

it be exciting to bring in some artifacts from the ancient Middle East, kind of

highlight Hoover's time in the Middle East, this will increase the

visibility to the museum, make it very exciting for people locally. That's Bjorn

Anderson, an associate professor of art history at the University of Iowa.

Bjorn was invited to speak at the exhibition and asked Aaron Daly, one of his

colleagues, to join him. Aaron Daly, who is a graduate student in the School of

Art and Art History at Iowa, has a background in ancient art and so she jumped

to mind as a really obvious person to invite, to give a public lecture. The museum

had contracted a company in Texas to provide the artifacts. Bjorn and Aaron wanted

an early preview before the exhibit opened to help them prepare for the lecture.

I wrote to the curator and asked if it would be possible for us to come in and

photograph the objects before our lecture because I thought that would kind of

be more interesting for a talk if we could point to things that are here in the

museum. But before the two even got there, Aaron Daly was already asking

herself some questions. I was feeling just a little bit, I was curious, I should

say, because I wondered where this private collection of ancient Near Eastern

antiquities came from. And I think that's something as visitors of museums we

might want to ponder, especially in the wake of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion in

Iraq. Where did these objects come from? How did they get to the United States?

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