A Cautionary Tale for Museums - Lessons from the Denney Collection

http://museum-security.org/denney/index.htm

A Modern Art collection - containing works by famous artists such as Appel, Dubuffet, Fontana, Mathieu and Tapies and worth several million pounds - was lent to the Dallas Museum of Art by the photographer Anthony Denney  when he retired to Spain in 1970. 

In 1990 the collection was transferred from Dallas to the Museum of Modern Art Toulouse by
letters signed "Anthony Denney". But Denney was already dead...and Dallas was never told that he was dead!.. 

In 1993 Dominique Baudis, Mayor of Toulouse accepted the collection as an apparently 
bona-fide donation to the City of Toulouse. But what kind of a donation was it?

"Lessons from the Denney Collection" originally part of a seminar on Art Loans held by the Institute of Art and Law in 1996, explores the issues surrounding the case, including 
aspects of Spanish and UK Private International Law.  It shows that loan collections are vulnerable to attack by third parties: more so than collections fully owned by museums. It highlights the importance of fully comprehensive loan agreements and the dangers of relying
too much on trust.

It makes various suggestions on how to improve the security of the Art Loan System, 
including sharing of information about Art Loans via the Internet.

"Lessons..." is on the Museum Security site in Amsterdam which has a useful set of links
 and a mailing list:  
http://museum-security.org

Key words: Art & Law, museums, art loans, museum security, art fraud, museum acquisition policy, protection of cultural property.