Well, I for one am horrified.
You need to talk to a lawyer.  If this deal were publicly known, I am sure
you ,er... your hypothetical museum, would have a real mess on your
hands.  Donors would want their stuff back; patrons might even consider
suing the museum.  The CM should contact a lawyer who deals with arts
organizations, not only for self-defense, but also if he/she wants to
actually fix the problem.  Find a way out of that deal.  It may have seemed
mutually beneficial to the director and the "registrar" but the museum and
the community actually suffer.
I can't recall the case right now, but I vaguely remember one from grad
school about a museum who took one of its volunteer's suggestions and put
certain firearms up on the market.  Said volunteer then purchased the
items.  That wasn't even as bad as you describe, and they got into legal
messes.  Also, remind the board that they personally can be held legally
liable in any law suits that may follow.
Don't desert a sinking ship until you've tried to plug the holes.
Vincent

At 09:21 AM 11/27/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>Suppose, hypothetically, that there was a director at a hypothetical small,
>up-and-coming museum who had just hired a person to enter collections
>information into our, ahem, THEIR new PastPerfect database.
>
>Suppose that new person was being paid about two thirds the going rate for
>such a position, but that she had negotiated a deal into her contract that
>allows her to be paid with items from the museum's collection, in addition
>to her paycheck. For example, let's suppose she collects military uniforms,
>and that the museum has many duplicates in its uniform collection.
>
>She negotiated this arrangement with the director, who has no museum
>background and no knowledge of collections management. There are no other
>paid staff in the collections/exhibits realm, but there is a half-time,
>volunteer Exhibits/Collections Manager with nominal responsibility. He has
>some museum background (mostly exhibits), and sees this as a blatant
>conflict of interest.
>He's expected to review and approve each item that the data-entry/registrar
>would like to deaccession and take home, but doesn't have the detailed
>knowledge of uniforms that she has as a collector. Her contract doesn't
>specify any objective way of determining the value or exchange rate for the
>uniforms. Essentially, she decides what is surplus in the collection,
>determines its value, etc.
>
>Now, the Exhibits/Collections Manager could conceivably research each item
>to determine its real value, but I, ahem, HE is already swamped with other
>urgent museum work, essentially performing a full-time job in 20 hours a
>week. (He still works full time elsewhere.) He's also appalled at the idea
>of paying the staff with items from the collection.
>
>I hear you all asking, where is the collections policy? Where are the
>professional standards? Don't they know that items in the collection are to
>remain in the public trust?
>
>Well, the Exhibits/Collections Manager knows, and one of those urgent tasks
>is the writing of a collections policy. But such policies have existed in
>the past, and have generally been ignored by the director and board. (Their
>hearts are in the right place, but IMHO they tend to view all this formal
>museum crap as a hindrance to their agenda.)
>
>What should that hypothetical Exhibits/Collections Manager do, under the
>(purely hypothetical) circumstances? He's most interested in correcting the
>problem, but at the very least would like to cover his hypothetical
>backside.
>
>Surely some of you have been in similar situations. What did you do? Sure,
>I'd love to hear success stories, but I'd like to hear about the pitfalls
>and failures, too. I need to know what NOT to do as well as what I should
>do.
>
>Thank you for your advice!
>
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Vincent T. Lyon
Robert Crown Law Library
Stanford University
650-725-1080
[log in to unmask]

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