Something like this came up at my place last summer, and it got nasty, but
we still have the aritfact.  We curate artifacts for the local historical
society, who is sort of our "parent" organization.  In the 1960's and 70's
when their membership was very strong and actively collecting artifacts,
they obtained some incredible things.  They did not know about using deed of
gift form, and the legalities of transfering ownership.  They made an
inventory of their holdings, and that was that.

Last summer a sister (or maybe daughter) of a donor visited the museum and
requested the return of her great-grandmother's butter churn.  Apparently
sister/mom had donated it without consulting our visitor (who would have
been all of 5 at the time).  She was decorating her house in a rustic style,
this churn was the only remaining object of her grandmothers meagre
possessions, and she wanted it for her hallway to be an umbrella stand (I
kid you not).  She even offered to get me one to look "exactly" like it from
Wal-Mart or somewhere.  Her perception was that as long as the artifacts
looked the same, what did it matter that I had a cheap china-made imposter.

As an administrator, patience is not one of my virtues, but I tried hard.  I
explained to her the need to retain the historical integrity of the original
artifact collection by not accepting replacements, and (using basic
kindergarten reasoning) that if let her do this, word would get out and my
collections would be targeted by descendents of all the original donors.
That did not satisfy her, and I had to go into the whole policy thing about
deed of gift, and ownership.  What made it difficult was that my facility
does not actually OWN the thing, the historical society does, and they have
no documentation, and very loosly organized policies at best to deal with
this type of situation.  It wound up going before their board of directors,
they concurred with me, nicely explained to the lady that she could not have
it back, and as far as we were concerned, thatmatter was dropped.  But I
always wonder about her hard feelings.  And what is going to happen when the
daughter of the man who gave us a really cool post office unit wants that
back to use as a trellis?

Lynita Langley-Ware
Director, Faulkner County Museum
Conway, AR






----- Original Message -----
From: "Susannah West" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 2:31 AM
Subject: Re: Requests to Rescind Donations


> I'm so glad this  topic has come up, because it is something that has been
> really  concerning me  lately.  We have several items in our collections
> that were LOANED, apparently in the early 1960s, which don't have any loan
> agreement documentation associated with them as far as anyone knows (or if
> there was, it's gone missing).  A  couple of years ago, a descendant of
the
> original lender wanted to see these items (which ARE on display, as we
have
> absolutely no storage space) but  wasn't  able to as the museum was closed
> at the time.  I have since  tried to  contact her, but received no
> response.  I have a nightmare that she will show up and demand them back.
>  I brought up this concern to our Board of Directors, and it came as a
total
>  surprise to them that these items were on loan  rather than the property
of
> the Ohio Historical Society.   I've queried the Ohio Historical Society,
and
> have gotten the advice that I should probably "let sleeping dogs lie."
But
> what happens when the dogs wake up?!
>
> Susannah West
> John Rankin House, Ripley, Ohio
>
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