Peter: Many thanks for sharing the article with the list. What was the
board of the South Florida Natural History Museum thinking?? Jack Hankla
offered the same Wyoming lease to our museum and I believe to the
Indianapolis Children's Museum -- so other museums may want to be aware! We
declined the offer thanks to our paleontology curator's skepticism.
Jane MacKnight
Registrar
Cincinnati Museum Center
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Rauch [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2002 3:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Quiz: Find What's Wrong...
Dear Museum-L Subscribers, Here's a quiz... How many things can
you find wrong with this "History for Sale" picture?
Is this any way to run a "museum"?! Donor Beware! And, what
about those "Colombian" artifacts?! Where is Kentucky, Colombia
anyway?
This case has to stand as an example/model for something.
Peter
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
History for Sale
How a prized collection of artifacts donated to the South
Florida Museum of Natural History ended up with a dentist in
Kentucky.
by Bob Whitby
City Link
http://www.clo-sfl.com
February 13, 2002
Until early January, the South Florida Museum of Natural History
in Dania Beach was home to one of the finest collections of
pre-Columbian artifacts in the world --bowls, cups, figurines,
grinding stones, stamps and rollers dipped in ink and used to
create tattoos and decorations on clothing, even a collection of
phalluses. The ceramic works, between 800 and 1,300 years old,
were donated by local collectors.
But the perennially cash-strapped museum needed to get a
creditor off its back, so its board of directors worked out a
deal: pottery as payment. The creditor, a dentist who collects
dinosaur bones, got a selection of pieces, the museum got out of
a potentially ruinous lawsuit and a portion of the pre-Columbian
collection got crated up and shipped out to Kentucky.
There is nothing illegal about the deal; museums are entitled to
dispose of artifacts as they see fit. It's called
deaccessioning, and it's routine in the museum business.
But there is something unethical about bartering with history to
pay the bills, says Patty Flynn, president of the Broward County
Archeological Society (BCAS). "Most museums would never sell to
a private collector," says Flynn, who also sits on the museum's
board of directors and voted against the deal. "That hurts your
ability to get collections, to get people to donate to you."
The museum owed $50,000 to Dr. Jack Hankla, a Danville, Ky.,
dentist, for a 15-year lease on land he owns in Wyoming where
scientists go to dig up dinosaur bones. (Hankla didn't return
calls for this story.) When the museum couldn't pay, Hankla
threatened to sue. In lieu of cash, he accepted 44 items with an
appraised value between $23,000 and $44,500.
Many of the pieces are from the museum's Zaragovia collection, a
treasure trove of 500-plus artifacts donated by brothers Angelo
Zaragovia and Efraim Saragovia. The brothers spell their last
names differently due to a bureaucratic snafu in their native
Colombia, but what they have in common is a lifetime of
collecting history from a time before their country was a
country.
"We believed [the collection] was going to stay in that museum,"
says a disheartened Angelo, who didn't know about the deal until
contacted for this story. "That is why we gave it."
Efraim, 57, and Angelo, 53, were born and raised in the city of
Cali. They were successful ranchers who bought and sold
artifacts, and had large homes in which to display them. But in
1980, a family member was kidnapped, and the brothers decided
Colombia was too dangerous. "It was a mess then, it's worse
now," Angelo says.
Here, they own a construction company and a gas station. Angelo
lives in Davie, Efraim in Hollywood. Neither has adequate room
to display the artifacts, so in 1997, they gave them all to what
was then called the Graves Museum of Archaeology. "We were so
happy," Angelo recalls. "They even had a cocktail party for us."
(Efraim could not be reached for comment as he was out of the
country on business.)
A museum volunteer who helped catalog the artifacts recalls the
excitement of the small museum receiving such a world-class
donation. "It was extraordinary, a magnificent collection," says
the person, who asked not to be named.
The museum's own Web site waxes poetic about the collection's
importance to this day: "Housed in the Graves Museum is one of
the country's greatest collections of pre-Columbian art.
Ceramics created before the 'discovery' of the New World abound.
These vessels and figurines reveal the secrets of mysterious
people which remained hidden for over a thousand years."
Nonetheless, the South Florida Museum of Natural History is
under no obligation to keep any of its artifacts. Its
deaccession policy says as much:
"The museum must remain free to improve and create order/chronologies
to its collections through selective disposal (sales and trade) and
acquisition. Therefore, unless there are specific restrictions to the
contrary, collection items may be deaccessioned."
The policy goes on to say that it's proper to get rid of things
when they are no longer relevant to the museum's purpose, when
there's a danger the curators can't care for them properly, when
an artifact has deteriorated or when the museum needs cash to
buy something else.
Museum director Sharon McMorris says parting with pieces of the
Zaragovia collection just made good business sense. "This
particular issue was done to avoid a threatened lawsuit, which
we did," McMorris says. "We didn't have the money to buy out the
lease."
She doesn't know if the brothers were told that their collection
could be liquidated -- she wasn't in charge back then. Given
similar circumstances today, she would be clear about that
possibility with any donor. "I would always tell people," she
says. "Once it is donated, it becomes property of the museum."
All fine and good, say those opposed to the deal, but what about
the museum's mission?
"Anytime you get into such a bad financial situation you have to
sell, there is something wrong," says Gypsy Graves, a museum
founder and former namesake. "That shows really poor
management."
Graves and the BCAS ran the museum on a volunteer basis until
1996, when they decided it was getting too big and needed a
professional staff. That decision would come back to haunt them
when the people they hired took over the museum and shut Graves
and the BCAS out in 1997.
Graves and the BCAS sued the museum separately. Graves settled
for money and the return of some of her artifacts. The BCAS case
is still ongoing. Last September, Broward Circuit Court Judge
Jeffrey Streitfeld ruled that the BCAS, in the person of its
president, Patty Flynn, must be allowed back on the museum's
board of directors. He also ruled that the museum cannot
deaccession any artifacts obtained by the museum before 1996
because that material belongs to the BCAS, not the current board
of directors. The museum appealed Streitfeld's ruling and the
case is now before the Fourth District Court of Appeals.
Meanwhile, Flynn attends every board meeting, usually with her
lawyer in tow. The board grants her access grudgingly, she says.
"They escort me to the boardroom for the meeting, then escort me
back out. I suppose I could look around if I pressed it, but you
get the idea they really don't want me there."
And she scrutinizes every move the board makes. Last month, as
the Zaragovia artifacts were being loaded onto a truck, Flynn
went down to the shipping dock to personally inspect the crates
for pre-1996 pieces. She didn't find any, but Flynn still
believes the damage is done.
One school of thought posits that decorations on pre-Columbian
artifacts may, in fact, be a written language. It's a
fascinating idea, but researchers who want to pursue it will now
have to do so without institutional access to a portion of one
of the world's best collections.
"It's like if you are reading a good mystery book and someone
before you has ripped out pages indiscriminately," Flynn says.
"History is a precious thing. You just don't sell it."
http://www.citylinkonline.com/news.html
(Note: This link expires within a week.)
South Florida Museum of Natural History (formerly Graves Museum...
http://www.gravesmuseum.org/
Broward County Archaeological Society
http://w3.usf.edu/~fas/broward.html
Florida Fossil Hunters
-- We touch and preserve the past --
http://www.floridafossilhunters.com/
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