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 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.