MS 303: Found in the Collection: Orphans, Old Loans and Abandoned Property
Dates: Aug 3 to Sep 11, 2009
Price: $425
Instructor: Lin Nelson-Mayson
Location: www.museumclasses.org
Description:
Every museum has a few stray items. Some lost
tags long ago. Others turn up as surprises during
inventories. A few are all that remain from
long-ago exhibits. While you'll want to keep
some, others may be deteriorating. Even worse,
some pose significant hazards for staff and the
rest of the collection. All raise legal and
professional questions. How do you deal with
objects that have no records? Or loans from
unidentified or deceased lenders? Found in the
Collection addresses how to identify abandoned
objects and old loans. It further covers the
application of state laws and rules for
identifying owners or establishing ownership.
Course Outline:
1. Introduction
2. Definitions and legislation
3. Identification and process - Abandoned
property and “Found in the Collection”
4. Identification and process - Old Loans
5. Systems to regulate future problems
6. Conclusion
Required Textbook
The New Museum Registration Methods, 4th edition.
Edited by Rebecca A. Buck & Jean Allman Gilmore.
427 pages (American Association of Museums; 1998)
ISBN: 0-931201-31-4. Available through American
Association of Museums. $55.00 (non-member cost) $40.00 (member cost)
Logistics:
Participants in Found in the Collection work
through sections on their own. Instructor Lin
Nelson-Mayson is available for scheduled email
support. Materials and resources include online
literature, slide lectures and dialog between
students and online chats led by the instructor.
The course is limited to 20 participants.
Found in the Collection runs four weeks. To
reserve a spot in the course, please pay at
<http://www.collectioncare.org/tas/tas.html>http://www.collectioncare.org/tas/tas.html
If you have trouble please contact Helen Alten at [log in to unmask]
Student Comments for MS303: Found in the Collection:
It covered situations which I am encountering in
my work. It showed me where to look to answer
questions about the legal aspects of FIC objects.
It made me aware of the weakness of current
Abandoned Property laws in my state (and
apparently most others)… I found the lectures and readings very helpful.
I liked being able to work on the materials at my
own pace. The feedback from the instructor was
very helpful. My favorite part of the course were
the online chats. These were very engaging and it
was great way to discuss issues and find
solutions to the challenges our collections pose.
I thought the course was very helpful and the
technology worked wonderfully for me. The
lectures were very helpful in giving an overview
and did a good job of summarizing the major
points. I thought the readings were especially
helpful in gaining different perspectives about
the issues. It was interesting to see other
institutions' policies and procedures.
Thank you for facilitating this course. Lin, our
instructor, was very helpful and insightful. She
asked very good questions, which helped me really
think carefully through all of the steps of
handling old loans, FICs and abandoned property.
While I will be making some revisions to our
policies and procedures, the course did confirm
that many of the policies and procedures we have
in place are very good. I certainly feel
empowered to deal with these objects now! I think
that the chats were extremely helpful for hashing
out the issues and gave me much-needed
reassurance that I was not the only one dealing with them.
I liked: a) how much content was covered; b) how
the information presented could be applied to a
variety of museums across the board (i.e. state
museums, not-for-profit, and yes, private-owned);
c) the ease that we could still interact as a
class even though we were all over the country.
It brought forth a lot of things that we haven't been doing as a museum…
The Instructor:
Lin Nelson-Mayson, with over 25 years of museum
experience at small and large institutions, is
director of the University of Minnesota's
Goldstein Museum of Design. Prior to that, she
was the director of ExhibitsUSA, a nonprofit
exhibition touring organization that annually
tours over 30 art and humanities exhibitions
across the country. For five years, she was a
coordinator or judge for the American Association
of Museums' Excellence in Exhibitions
Competition. She currently serves on the
exhibition committee for the National Sculpture
Society. Ms. Nelson-Mayson has extensive
experience with the planning, preparation,
research and installation of exhibitions. Ms
Nelson-Mayson's experience includes teaching
museum studies and museology courses. Her
particular interest is the needs of small museums.
Her credentials include the following;
* An MFA from The Ohio State University in sculpture and critical writing
* A BFA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in painting.
* Work as a curator for the Ross County
Historic Society (Chillicothe, Ohio), the Art
Museum of South Texas (Corpus Christi), the
Columbia Museum of Art (South Carolina), and the
Minnesota Museum of American Art.
=========================================================
Important Subscriber Information:
The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes).
If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).
|
