P3D P3D Re: Donating to a museum

[Susan Wageman <suewageman@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>>>Also, we are still actively searching for a museum that will actually
>>>>USE and DISPLAY on collection on an on-going basis.
>>
>>Good luck!  Not likely to happen.  

John is right. Most museums exhibt maybe 80% or less of their holdings. In
addition to sharing their collections with the public, they consider their
mission to be preserving their collections for researchers and the future.
Since photographic collections are particularly sensitive to light, they
are often relegated to storage, with only copies of the originals
displayed. When originals are displayed, they are rotated to limit the
light exposure of any one piece.

>>A question to the lawyers of the group, when one wills a collection to a
>>museum, can one make the donation conditional such that it must be
>>exhibited, or, always available for public viewing and research, or,
>>never to be sold?

I am not a lawyer, but I have been in the museum field for 15 years. The
answer is, "yes" you may place as many restrictions on your donation as you
wish. However, the museum is not obligated to accept your donation if it
doesn't like the restrictions. In fact, most museums have a policy not to
accept donations with restrictions. The reason is cost. Museums have
extremely limited funds, and collections preservation is very expensive
(even when the stuff is in storage). Acceptance of any donation into the
collection obligates the museum to provide proper care. Museums want the
flexibility to store items that are not of viewing quality, but of interest
to researchers. Also, they want to be able to sell inferior pieces or
duplicates in order to fill in holes in the collection. (If it makes you
feel any better, it is considered unethical to use funds from collections
sales for anything other than the collections.)

If you still wish to make a highly restricted donation, I suggest you
include a substantive endowment for collections care. This will help
alleviate concerns about the costs of your restrictions. 

Susan Wageman 
suewageman@xxxxxxxxxxx 
swageman@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


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End of PHOTO-3D Digest 2404
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