At 03:48 PM 3/24/97 -0800, you wrote:
>I'm looking for examples (e.g., newspaper articles and other written
documents
>I can get my hands on) about cases in which museums have been sued, have
gotten
>into some other type of legal hot water, or at least have faced intense
public
>scrutiny and embarrassment over misuse or mishandling of their artifact
>collections due to registration problems.  I am NOT looking for cases of
abuse
>in terms of the artifacts' physical condition, but more cases in which
artifacts
>have disappeared without a paper trail, have been mistakenly treated as
personal
>property (as in the case where a museum director takes home an object that
was
>in his/her office when in fact it belonged in the artifact collection), etc.
>Hopefully you get the gyst of what I'm after.

You may wish to look into a case concerning the director of the Southwest
Museum in Los Angeles and another concerning the Winterthur Collection.

robt