This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In Utah and across America, individuals and families flock to museums to enjoy exhibitions of art and cultural objects. Especially when these works come from around the world, these displays offer an experience that many would never otherwise have and certainly will never forget. Congress is considering legislation to ensure that these opportunities continue.

A foreign government will not lend its works for exhibitions without confidence that those works will be safe while in the United States, and Congress in 1965 enacted a law to provide this assurance. Under this law, works loaned by foreign governments are protected if the State Department concludes that an exhibition is culturally significant and in the national interest.

These exhibitions are valuable in several different ways. They provide enjoyment, education and cultural awareness to individuals. They further the mission of museums to share the artistic heritage of the world with their own communities. And, as the State Department said when Congress considered the immunity law in 1965, they are "a significant step in international cooperation."

The immunity law worked well for more than 40 years, facilitating more than 1,000 exhibitions of works from around the world in museums across the United States. Foreign governments knew what the law said and the kind of protection it would provide. In 2007, however, a federal court decision effectively neutralized the immunity law. As a result of this decision, lending works through the immunity law process could now expose a foreign government to a new category of lawsuits. To make matters worse, those lawsuits could involve art that the foreign government had not lent at all.

Lending works of art for exhibition in the United States suddenly became much riskier and governments began thinking twice about lending anything at all.

Right here in Utah, some of the Brigham Young University Museum of Art's requests to borrow works from Islamic countries were denied in the process of assembling the 2012 exhibition titled "Beauty and Belief: Crossing Bridges with the Arts of Islamic Culture." Museums have documented similar denials from countries all over the world.

Thankfully, Sen. Orrin Hatch introduced legislation to solve this problem after hearing from museums here in Utah, around the country and even overseas. His bill, S3155, would once again make the immunity law clear and reliable. On Sept. 16, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved Hatch's bill and we hope the full Senate acts quickly to pass it and that the House of Representatives will follow suit. It was not easy for Hatch to draft a bill that would effectively accomplish its objective without unintended consequences. Efforts to recover art stolen by governments, particularly Nazi Germany, have received increased attention in recent years.

While this bill does not address those complicated issues, it does exempt claims from the Nazi era or similar instances of widespread systematic government looting.

Our institutions and the Utah Museums Association join hundreds of museums and associations across the country in supporting this legislation. This small bill will reap big benefits for Utahns and Americans everywhere.

Gretchen Dietrich is executive director of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah. Mark Magleby, Ph.D., is director of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University.