"But I get very tired of hearing arrogant museum people sniffing that great art or important historic artifacts rightfully "belong" in museums. My apologies to the list but here in lies one of the great plagues of my life. I am a working metal smith, reproducing 18th century and earlier items. I have long contended that as we are a human collective, that which is our collective heritage belongs to all. Art or artifacts held privately or in museums should not be the sole property of any one or any organization. I find the ownership of intellectual rights by any one other than the person who created the work to be an offense. That I may be sued by a museum for reproducing a lantern common to the 18th century, just because they have one in there collection is to me ludicrous. That I am denied access to collections because I am not a serious student ( I only have 50+ hours of studio art over a Bachelors in Business administration { RIT-1970 } and have been making museum reproductions for only 20 years.) Art and history have to be shared will every one, with out some one else deciding whether they have the right to it. I will probably get blasted for this post, but having been an educator/renactor I just get frustrated beyond belief at not having access to information, or not being allowed to make things that were in common use because of threatened law suites. Tw ========================================================= 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).