 Ms. Susan Barger, please go ahead Susan. Hi everyone, we're doing this deaccessioning webinar which people have asked for for a long time so I'm really happy that we can do it. I just want to tell you what's coming up. Our last webinar for the year is in two weeks from today and it's about collections care during seasonal special events. So you can register for that online and we hope to see a lot of you there. If you have questions about collections care, you can always go to the Connecting to Collections Care Community Forum, which is on our website. In order to post a question, you need to be a registered member that otherwise you can read the answers and look at questions and please take advantage of that. The website is Connecting to Collections. Oh my, I'm sorry, I have an incomplete website address here that it's connecting to collections.org. You can like us on Facebook, you can follow us on Twitter. If you need to contact us, you can always contact me at this email address. So without further ado, I'm going to turn you over to John Simmons who is the principal at Museologica in Belfont, Pennsylvania and has written a wonderful book called Things Great and Small. So John, take it away. Thank you very much. The practice of deaccessioning is really as old as the practice of collecting. Nevertheless, legal and ethical considerations have made it one of the more controversial practices in museums today. And as we'll discuss during this webinar, deaccessioning objects from a collection is usually legal but may not always be ethical and it is in that gap that most of the controversies lie. So I start out with a participant poll. Let's see, there we go. What kind of collection do you work in? And we've divided this up. We've given you a few answers like art, history, historic, cider, science but if you could fill this poll out, this will give us a better idea of who our audience is. And I believe you should all be able to see the poll up right now. So what is deaccessioning? There we go. Okay. So is the poll is going all right, I presume? Okay. So what is deaccessioning? Deaccessioning is the opposite of accessioning. It is the permanent removal of an object from the museum's collection. Only objects that have been accessioned into a collection, of course, can be deaccessioned. So the first control over deaccessioning is a good accessioning policy and a good collection plan. If you have a good accession policy and a good collecting plan, you will minimize the need for any deaccessioning that's going to take place in the future. Disposal is what happens to the object after deaccessioning. It's how you get rid of the object. And this may mean that you sell the object to another nonprofit museum or you trade it to them. The object may be destroyed. It's important to remember that disposal can also be a very sticky ethical issue, but these are really two separate things. Deaccessioning and disposal, although they are linked, they are separate in terms of policy. A bit of historical perspective, although museums have removed objects from their collections for hundreds of years for as long as there have been museums, the word deaccessioning itself is fairly new. It first appeared in print in the early 1970s, and attitudes and perceptions of deaccessioning have changed greatly over the years. It has not always been consistent. In 1927, the executive secretary of the American Association of Museums, Lawrence Vail Coleman, wrote that in relation to deaccessioning policy, on occasion worthless material may be accepted and later thrown away rather than give offense by refusing it. And of course, no museum would operate that way today. We're a lot more careful about the things that we do take in. Another view comes from Thomas Messer, who was director of the Guggenheim Museum, and he rather famously wrote that a museum no more than an individual cannot constantly ingest without occasionally excreting. The Code of Ethics of the American Alliance of Museums, which was published in 1991, restricted the use of proceeds from the sale of collections materials to the acquisition of collections. However, a lot of people had issues with that, particularly people that worked in history museums, and the Code was revised then in 1994 by the AAM Ethics Commission to reflect these disagreements. And the new Code stated that proceeds from the sale of deaccession objects could not be used for anything other than the acquisition or direct care of collections. And very cleverly, the Ethics Commission did not define what they meant by direct care of collections, which has been fiercely debated ever since. Does direct care of collections include, for example, hiring a conservator? Or what about fixing a leak in the roof in collection storage? Or what about building a new exhibit gallery that is up to current environmental standards? In May 2015, the AAM formed a direct care task force that is now gathering data from the community and opinions on the subject, and they hope to give us a better definition of what constitutes direct care of collections. So this brings us to another participant poll, which is, what do you think constitutes direct care of collections? In terms of using the proceeds of the deaccessioned object, what do you think is legitimate use? So can we, do we have that poll up? There we go. I put, just put in your answers, because I missed on poll number one. That's okay, so I'll get some of this here. I see that we have 96 answers, 97, but I don't see any of the answers. Yeah, I think we're down here. Oh, there we go. Okay, yeah, I see them now. To be quite a divergence of opinion, which is not surprising. And this is one of the issues that the AAM committee is now working with, is trying to determine what constitutes direct care. And of course, this will be different depending on the kind of museum you work in and what your collection is like and how you use your collection. And this, of course, is one of the problems. Well, we'll let that poll continue for a bit, because it will be nice to look at those answers later. And we'll move on with a little bit of historical perspective. There are many cultural differences in attitudes towards deaccessioning. In general, European museums have been more reluctant to deaccession than museums in the United States, although recent economic problems have forced more European museums to deaccession and sell some objects from their collections. And when I teach museum studies in Latin America, I have discovered that my students there are usually horrified at the very idea of deaccessioning. They're appalled that any object would ever be removed from a museum collection, but it's worth noting their collections tend to be a lot smaller. They have a lot fewer objects. Most European museums follow the ICOM code of ethics, which is the International Council on Museums Code of Ethics, which states that there must always be a strong presumption against the disposal of objects to which a museum has assumed formal title. And by contrast, the American Alliance of Museums Code of Ethics states that museums must remain free to improve their collections through selective disposal and intentionally to sacrifice objects for well-considered purposes. So there's some serious differences in the field, depending on where you're located, as I said, what kind of museum. I googled the word deaccession recently, and I got 49,700 hits in less than half a second, which is an indication of how much the word has been in the news lately. A lot of the hits that I found were links to deaccessioning policies in different museums, which alone is interesting. If you're looking for policy examples, you might try just googling deaccessioning and follow those links. A smaller number were links to articles about deaccessioning, but by far the overwhelming majority were links to newspaper stories or other media stories about controversial deaccessioning. And almost all of the stories were about art museums, so you may wonder, what is it with art museums? I think this is generally because individual works of art have higher monetary value than do other museum objects, and hence they attract more controversy. Most other museum deaccessions tend to fly under the radar of the press, and please note I am not saying that art has greater value than other museum objects. What I'm saying is that in general works of art have a higher fair market value than most other objects, and for that reason they attract attention. So what are the reasons in the context for deaccessioning? There are many reasons that museums need to deaccession objects from their collection. Deaccessioning should be thought of as a critical tool for use in managing a collection, because collections are dynamic, they are not static. They grow and they change over time as museums do, so collections have to be periodically reviewed and occasionally have to be revised. Taking proper care of your collection does mean not spending your limited collection care resources on objects that do not help you accomplish your museum's mission. It's also worth noting that museums are legally and ethically accountable for the acquisition, conservation, and management of their collections, and deaccessioning is part of this management. In a 1987 article, Stephen Weill made three important points regarding deaccessioning decisions. He's pointed out that the retention of each and every object in a collection involves an ongoing expense for the museum, because you have a lot of care and management cost with collections. Deaccessioning may generate funds that can be used to acquire other objects that are more critical in the mission and in the collecting plan. Deaccessioning an object to another museum, particularly to a peer institution, may in fact better serve the museum community, the discipline, or the object itself, because you may deaccession something to a museum that will make better use of it than you were doing. Among the reasons that museums may wish to deaccession objects are a few that we'll mention here. One is safety. The object may be unsafe to maintain in the collection. It may be too expensive to store safely or to exhibit safely. An example is that an object may have become dangerous for people to be around due to chemical or physical deterioration, because it's a source of, for example, radiation or possibly contains friable asbestos. The reasons may be monetary. Some museums choose to deaccession objects in order to gain money from their sale, and we'll discuss this point further, but for now I'll just point out that ethically, the proceeds from deaccessioning should only be used for the acquisition of more objects or for the direct care of the collection, and deaccessioning of objects should never be used to cover budget shortfalls. Deaccessioning may take place to improve the collection, so objects may be deaccessioned as part of a process to refine or to upgrade or to focus the collection of the museum, or due to the recognition that an object or a specimen may be better off in another institution, they may be objects the museum will never use, including duplicates, copies, substandard objects or objects that have deteriorated to the point where their value has been lost. You may deaccession in order to serve the academic discipline better, so a museum may deaccession objects for exchange, trade, or as a gift to a sister institution in a way that helps all the museums involved improve their collections. In some academic disciplines, duplicates are exchanged on purpose to improve access and use. This is a very common practice in herbariums and many natural history museums, and also common in some other disciplines. You may need to deaccession objects for reasons of repatriation and restitution, so it may take place as part of the process of returning objects to their rightful owners. This may include objects that are stolen, objects that were acquired or imported illegally, Nazi-era artworks, it may include objects that are covered by NAGPRA by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, for example. A museum may wish to deaccession something that was accepted as part of a large accession but is not within the scope of the museum. Of course, if you have a really good accessioning policy, that shouldn't happen, although it does. These may be things the museum shouldn't have in the first place, or the scope of the collection may change to the point where some things are no longer relevant. Objects may be deaccessioned if they are no longer relevant or no longer used due to dissociation, which means such things as the loss of documentation, which causes the object to be devalued. The discovery that an object is not authentic or because the object has deteriorated to the point where it is no longer useful. EZIMs may also deaccession objects they can no longer afford. Afford to store, afford to protect because security costs are very high, afford to preserve. Some objects are just too expensive to keep due to the required housing or to meet safety issues are because they are in great need of conservation work. So I'd like to do another participant poll at this point, and this is going to be a very interesting question. Who owns your museum, your collections in your museum? Because you can't deaccession things you don't own. I once heard a registrar say that she needed to accession a found in collections object in order to deaccession it. Well, no, you don't need to do that. If you don't own it, it can't be deaccessioned. You can just get rid of it. But there's an interesting issue here about who owns the things in your collection. Let's see if I can take a look here at some of these answers. The public, the public, public trust, the state, government, the American people, the city, the association. We're getting some pretty good answers our university. And of course this is another one of those questions that has many answers to it. But you do need to figure out who owns your collections, and the best place to start is to figure out who owns your museum. If you recall the recent controversy in Detroit over the sale of the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, this is a good example. When the city of Detroit recently contemplated declaring bankruptcy, some of the creditors and some of the city officials wanted to sell the collection of the art museum in order to pay off some of the city's debts. The museum collection was valued at somewhere between $2.8 and $4.6 billion. So this sale could have happened because as it turns out the city owned the collections, not the museum. The museum just exhibited them. And so this is a serious issue. So, who owns your collection? If your museum is organized as a trust with the board of directors, in all probability the museum owns the collections and the board is empowered by law to make acquisition and deaccessioning decisions. However, if your museum is part of a city, county, or state government or is owned by a college or university, that entity is most likely the owner of the collection, not the museum. And this is the situation that has led to many of the recent deaccessioning controversies. And if we have time at the end, we will talk about a few of those controversies. Question I get often asked is what federal and state laws address deaccessioning? In general, there are no state or federal laws that prohibit the sale of objects from a museum collection or that restrict the use of proceeds from the sale of museum collections. In other words, it is perfectly legal for a museum to deaccession and dispose of objects from its collection in the normal course of managing the institution. Now, there are a few exceptions. These exceptions include such things as restrictions put on things by the donors. The museum's nonprofit status or trust obligations are the museum's organizational bylaws, constitution, policies, and admission. So let's talk about these exceptions to the general rule. And we'll begin with donor restrictions. There may be objects in your collection that are not available for deaccessioning because of a precatory restriction. A precatory restriction means the donor has specified something on the order of the object can never be deaccessioned or the object has to be exhibited permanently. Or if it is deaccessioned, it has to be returned to the donor's heirs or given to another museum. These are all fairly common restrictions that used to be put on things for donors, and those would be an issue with deaccessioning. In general, museums should avoid accepting gifts with precatory restrictions, the restricted gifts, because these restrictions are very difficult to comply with in the long run. They may restrict the museum's ability to achieve its mission, and they can be very expensive in terms of staff time and exhibit space to honor. So in general, we try to avoid these kinds of restrictions, even though they might protect the objects from being deaccessioned. Sometimes, precatory restrictions can be overturned by the use of sea prey proceedings. Sea prey is a legal phrase, which means as near as possible. The late Stephen Weill explained that sea prey is the doctrine in the law of charities, whereby when it becomes impossible, impracticable or illegal to carry out the particular purpose of the donor, a scheme will be framed by a court to carry out the general intention of the donor by applying the gift of charitable purposes that are closely related or similar to the original purpose. In other words, you can come up with a scheme that will be close to what the donor intended. You'll have to consult a lawyer to determine whether you can do this or not, and how to do it is the very complicated legal proceeding. You will have to go to court. An example of this is you may call the controversy that went from the 1980s through the 90s until fairly recently surrounding the relocation of the Barnes Foundation. The Barnes Foundation collection was located in the Barnes School in the suburbs, and it was moved to Museum Row in downtown Philadelphia, and it was the sea prey doctrine that was used to overturn the terms of the Barnes Trust in order to legally move the collection. Lawyers will warn you that this is an area of law that is evolving very quickly. On the one hand, 49 state legislatures, and ironically all except Pennsylvania, have passed a version of the 2006 Model Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which, among other things, liberalizes the rules for releasing and modifying restrictions on institutional assets. On the other hand, common law in many states has been moving to give donors a greater say in whether restrictions are enforced or modified. So these are two contradictory things going on at the same time. The bottom line is if you want to overturn donor restrictions, it is essential that you consult with an attorney familiar with this area of the law and your particular state laws concerning the release or modification of restrictions. This is not the time to try to do it yourself. The institution's nonprofit status may also affect deaccessioning. Most museums are organized as nonprofits, and the trustees of a nonprofit museum organized as a trust have a duty of care and a duty of obedience to consider when it comes to collections care. And this is where we when we talk about collections being held by museums in the public trust. And this public trust responsibility includes deaccessioning. A trustee has a legal obligation to protect, preserve, and increase the assets of a trust. It's very well stated in one of my favorite museum books, A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections, that at the very least, the board should be under obligation to institute policies reasonably designed to further the mission of the organization and should also be able to demonstrate good faith efforts to monitor such policy. If your museum's institutional mission, the one that's formally adopted by the museum governance, emphasizes the role of the collection, this will strengthen the obligation the board has to protect the collection. However, in some recent court cases, lawyers have argued for a more liberal use of deaccessioning funds by claiming that the trustees' duty to increase the assets of the trust obligates them to try to sell deaccession objects for the highest price that they can get because this will increase the assets of the trust. So again, we have some contradictions in the law, and these are going to be very sticky issues to work with. Another area that may cause exceptions to the general rule is the organizational bylaws, constitutions, and policies. And the museum's bylaws, constitution, and policies do not directly have the force of law, but they can be a factor in legal challenges to deaccessioning along with the institutional mission. So your board or other governing body is required bylaw to do certain things and prevented bylaw from doing other things as a nonprofit. And among the things the board must do is abide by the organization's bylaws, our constitution, and support the policies it approved. So if you have bylaws for your museum that strongly argue against deaccessioning or the use of deaccessioning funds for something other than direct care of the collections, this can be turned into a legal argument if you wish to challenge the deaccession or the use of the funds. Another aspect is notification of the Internal Revenue Service. If a museum decides to deaccession a gift within three years of its receipt, this will likely cause a tax issue for the donor if the donor took a tax deduction or the donation. So if the museum deaccessions a donated object within three years by the calendar date of accessioning it, the museum is required to notify both the donor and the Internal Revenue Service. And you can read about this on the Internal Revenue website. There is a form 8282 which needs to be filled out. So if you are in the situation of deaccessioning a gift that was received less than three years ago, you should look at the IRS website and check the restrictions. These things do change over time, so do go and check that. For sources for more information, I've compiled a handout with some references for those of you who want to look deeper into the legal and ethical aspects of deaccessioning. The list is by no means comprehensive, but rather consists of what I think are some extremely useful things to read, many of which can be found and downloaded easily on the Internet. Next area I'd like to address is professional standards. Because our time for this webinar is somewhat limited, we're not going to go into detail about professional standards and codes of ethics today. I believe that those will all be addressed in another webinar at a later date. But information on where to find the codes of ethics for several significant museum organizations is available on your handout. Keep in mind that ethical standards are not set in stone. By definition, ethical standards evolve and change because ethics are based on the collective experience of the community. And also keep in mind that there are differences in ethical standards among different types of museums, which reflects the different collections and how the collections are used. An example of that is that science museums are generally more inclined to deaccession specimens than, for instance, art museums are to deaccession art. We will, however, consider a few ethical aspects of deaccessioning that relate to making the decisions that we make in museums. And one of these is should we keep the objects that we deaccession in the public domain? There are a lot of people in the museum world that worry about the sale of objects from museum collections to private individuals. Because when this happens, it means the objects are no longer in the public domain, which is to say they can no longer be seen by the public. In 2003, the AAM started a collections exchange center to give museums a place where they could list objects that they were going to deaccession so that other museums could try to acquire them. And this was a very well-intended effort, but unfortunately it received very little support from the community and ultimately AAM dropped it because it was so poorly used. One issue is that to place the object in another museum may well mean that it has to be either given away or traded or sold for less than fair market value, which as I mentioned earlier can be interpreted as an abrogation of the duty of the board because the board should try to maximize the proceeds for an object so they can then better support the museum, and one would hope sell fewer objects. Or should they? This is a very interesting ethical point, and I think you can make a strong argument in both ways on this. I don't think we have come to a community consensus yet. One way to allow other museums to have a chance to acquire things is to, when you deaccession things, allow other nonprofits to bid first and only after other nonprofits have had a fair chance to acquire the objects, send them to public auction. And this has been done at a number of institutions. In part, this depends on your reasons for deaccessioning and also depends on how much you want to gain from the deaccession. There is a credibility issue, and we must always keep in mind the need for museums as public institutions to be transparent as possible in their operations. The same legal regulations that allow museums to operate as nonprofit institutions also require museums to maintain their collections in the public trust for other audiences. And although the concept of the public trust has been attacked by some lawyers recently, it's important to remember that even when museums are not technically organized as trust under the applicable laws, the courts have generally found them to be operating as trust and have treated them in that way. Public trust is one of those controversial issues that lawyers can argue either way in court. Another factor is why the object needs to be deaccessioned. Is it being deaccessioned as part of a management of the collection or is it being deaccessioned for the money that its sale is going to bring in? In most of the controversial cases, the deaccessioning was presented as an emergency measure, usually couched in the phrases, if we don't do this, then the museum is going to close down, the museum is going to go broke. Well, if a museum is so poorly managed by its board and its director that it's accumulated a massive debt, you have to wonder what good will deaccessioning and sale of these objects do. You have to remember that the public are the beneficiaries of the trust that allows the museum to operate. So what guaranteed is the public have that the museum is going to be better managed once the immediate financial crisis is over. When a for-profit organization faces a financial crisis, the sale of part of its assets is essentially a matter of a business judgment. But when a non-profit faces this crisis, the sale of its assets, as in the case of a museum, can mean a disposal of part of its very reason for being. And this is a very good quote, again, taken from Malaro and DeAngeles' legal primer on managing museum collections. For-profit organizations can treat their collections as financial assets in a non-profit that you do not do that because your assets are held in the public trust. Another issue that's related to all of these, to credibility and reasons for deaccessioning, has to do with notification of the donors. Some museums have a policy that requires them to notify living artists when their works are deaccessioned. Others have a policy that says they will notify the donor of an object or even the heirs of a donor when objects they gave the museum are deaccessioned. Personally, I think this is a very bad idea because it implies that the donor still has some control or some legal interest in the object, which is contrary to the legal definition of a gift. Once a gift is made, the original owner has no more claim on that object than any other person. But if you have this clause that says you will notify the donor when that object is deaccessioned, that implies that the gift is not complete because you're giving the donor special interest. And I believe that notification of donors may weaken the museum's credibility, both with donors and with the public. That's just my opinion. A lot of people strongly disagree with that. And feel that the museums should or under an obligation to notify donors when they deaccession things that they donated. And this, again, is a controversial issue. It will depend on the kind of museum you work in and how that works out in your policies. So it brings us to another participant poll. I would like to know if your museum has a deaccessioning policy. And if so, do you think that the policy that your museum has is a good one? So we have a pretty simple yes or no poll here. So it looks like quite a number have a deaccession policy. So your choices are yes, you have one and it's good, you have one and it's not good, or no, you do not have one. Could we make that poll box just a little bit larger because I can't quite read the numbers on the bottom to the replies to the last question. There we go, thank you. So it looks like overwhelmingly people do have a deaccessioning policy and they are happy with it. That's very good. Okay, so very interesting. It's more people than I expected do have a deaccessioning policy and fortunately very few of those are unhappy with their policy. So as I mentioned at the beginning of this webinar, the best way to avoid deaccession is to have a good accessioning policy and a good collections plan. Policy should be in harmony with one another, including the mission which tells you what your institution's goals are, the collection plan that tells you what you need to collect and what not to collect in order to accomplish the mission and what not to collect can be as important as what you do collect. The accessioning policy tells you how to ensure that the objects you take legal possession of fit the collections plan and help you accomplish your mission and the deaccessioning policy is there as an important collections management tool that will help you make the best use of your limited collections care resources to achieve your mission. And I always say limited collections care resources because I have yet to find a museum who feels they have enough resources to properly take care of their collection. So it's important to have these policies in harmony. They need to work together. If one gets reviewed or revised, you are wise to take a look at the other related policies as well. Deaccessioning policy is one of the few exceptions in which procedures should be part of the policy statement. Normally the procedures for enacting the policy are separate so that they can be changed to better enforce the policy without having to go back to the museum's governance and seek approval. But deaccessioning because it is so controversial is the exception. And I do recommend for this one policy alone including procedures as part of the policy. The policy should mandate that deaccessioning can only be done for reasons accepted in standard museum practice. That deaccessioning requires approval by the museum's governing authority. And that deaccessioning must be done in compliance with the board's fiduciary duties. In other words, in keeping with the board's obligations to protect the museum. The policy should spell out the criteria for deaccessioning which need to be in harmony with the mission and the collecting plan. The policy should specify who is responsible for approving deaccessions and normally that people put in a dollar value there so over a certain amount it needs to go to the full board under a certain amount a director or a curator can sign off. And it should also mandate that the museum keep very thorough written records of any deaccessioning actions. Your proposed sample policy should begin with a statement of purpose for deaccessioning in your particular institution. It should include a phrase that tells you that deaccession should be an adherence to the museum's mission. That the deaccessioning must comply with any laws of your state that are applicable. You should comply with the intent of the donor. Deaccession should be documented in writing. A lot of people like to list the acceptable reasons for deaccessioning objects as part of a policy. And of course it should have those procedural steps. Deaccessioning is only part of the issue. The other related issue of course is methods of disposal. And there are both acceptable and unacceptable methods, both legally and ethically. Acceptable methods include donation to another non-profit institution, exchanging objects for other objects that help you better accomplish your museum's mission, use of deaccessioned objects in public programming, repatriation, the return to the donor or the donor's heirs. And of course I've already told you, I think this is a bad idea but not everyone does. It is acceptable to sell objects. I recommend selling them through a dealer to avoid having your museum's name directly associated with the sale. They can be sold at a public auction. And again, I strongly recommend using an intermediary so that it does not appear that your museum is selling objects from the collection. And of course destruction if the object poses a safety hazard or in many cases things that are faults or forgeries are destroyed. There are also unacceptable means of disposal. These include selling deaccessioned objects in the museum gift shop, which is considered an ethical no-no and can get you in legal trouble as well. Gift or sale of deaccessioned objects to a staff member or a board member and simply tossing it in the dumpster, I think is a very bad idea. If an object is dumpster worthy, it should be destroyed. Otherwise you can have really bad public relations things bounce back on you. I once worked with a museum that was getting rid of some old signage and some objects which had never been accessioned. They had a massive amount of these to do. So they did use a dumpster behind the institution and everything that they got rid of was really trash. But dumpster divers in the city found the things, pulled them out and then went after the museum and the local newspaper accusing them of throwing away donated objects. And of course the museum was then put in the awkward position of having to defend itself and explain that they weren't throwing away things that were donated. And this generated a lot of needless bad publicity for the institution. So I think we're doing all right on time. Let's talk about a few controversies before we turn to questions. Most of the controversies involve the use of the proceeds of deaccessioning rather than the deaccessioning itself. And part of this has to do with monetization of the collections and subsequently bad public relations. There have been a lot of recent cases in the news where the owners of collections, usually it's been colleges or universities but sometimes boards of trustees seem to view the museum collections as a piggy bank from which they can withdraw assets for cash at will. And as the court challenges have shown, for the most part this is perfectly legal to use the collection in this way although it is definitely unethical by museum standards. And the resulting publicity typically reflects very badly on the part of those advocating the sale. Monetization refers to treating the objects in the collection as financial assets based on their free market value. And this is what happens when a museum decides to deaccession an object and sell it. In this case what you're saying is that the free, the fair market value of the object trumps all other values. It's more important than the cultural value, the nostalgic value, historic value, value to the community. All of these are ignored because you're converting the object into cash. And a lot of people get very passionate about this and want to look for ways to resist this sort of deaccessioning and sale. There are a few ways to do this. We've already mentioned that objects with precatory restrictions such as cannot be sold or must be exhibited permanently can easily be challenged, but even these precatory restrictions can be overturned in court by using the C. Frey doctrine in the law. The museum board or whatever governance the museum has can be challenged if the deaccession seems to be contrary to the museum's mission. This is a very difficult kind of challenge to make. There have not been many of them. They're usually not successful. The way that this is typically done is people appeal to the attorney general of the state where the museum is located and they ask for an intervention. In most states it's the office of the attorney general that oversees charities or public trust, which museums are. So there are very few examples of this being successful in practice, but if this involves a particularly iconic object, an object that is very central to the museum's mission, this sometimes can be a successful challenge. Another challenge is on the intended use of the proceeds. What makes a non-profit institution different from a for-profit is not how much money it brings in. There is no limit to the amount of money a non-profit can earn. The difference is how that money is used. And the internal revenue service is very strict about this. A non-profit must use its proceeds to accomplish its mission. So the proceeds that are gained have to be put back into accomplishing the organizational mission. This sort of challenge can be made by appealing to the internal revenue service and in effect outing the museum for not following non-profit rules. I have not seen any court cases where this has been done yet, but I expect to see some in the future because the IRS does have very clear rules about profits in non-profit institutions. And lately I have seen some instances of the use of deaccessioning funds in non-profit museums where they are treated as if they're assets in a for-profit institution. And this can land you in some issues with tax law. So that's another avenue that you might try working on if you're opposed to a deaccession or the use of those deaccession funds. There have recently been some rather high-profile cases in the news, and I thought we might recap those real quickly before we go to questions because these are the ones that tend to get the most attention. Fisk University sold a 50% interest in its Stiglitz collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The sale was challenged based on the donor intent for the Stiglitz collection because the donor intent was clearly to have that collection in the Fisk Museum to be used by students. The university used the C.Prey doctrine in this case when they went to court, and they won. The collection is now shared. The sale went through. And by the collection being shared, this means the objects in the collection must be physically transported back and forth between Bittenville, Arkansas, and Nashville, Tennessee on a regular basis. When you have shared ownership, the IRS now requires both owners to have possession for the percent of time that reflects their ownership. So it's a 50% sale. They each have to have the collection physically in their possession half the time. So with this sale, Fisk University got $30 million for allowing the collection to be shipped back and forth every two years in this case. So every two years, everything has to be packed up and transported from Bittenville to Nashville or back. Alice Walton of the Crystal Bridges Museum has been portrayed both as a very savvy art collector and as a vulture who uses her family's fortune to raid museums that are suffering through financial hard times. So this resulted in a lot of bad publicity, and at the end the university did get their way and they did get $30 million for it. Another case was Randolph College in Lynchburg, Virginia, which decided to sell a painting from the Meyer Museum to make up for a college deficit, college budget deficit. The sale was challenged, but it went through because it turned out the college owned the painting, not the museum. The museum managed the painting, but the college was the owner. The really tragic thing in this case was that back in 1920, the student body had raised $2,500 to buy the painting for the museum. So people felt very strongly that this painting belonged in the museum, and even though the students raised the money to buy it, it still belonged to the university, not to the museum. So they raised $2,500 in 1920. Randolph College got $25.5 million for the painting in auction. The money was then put into a college endowment. The worst thing that happened in this case to the college was some very bad publicity, including a sanction by the Association of Art Museum Directors, and the college actually issued a statement saying that they didn't care about the sanction. The scariest thing that happened was described in an article in Museum Magazine that pointed out this was a semantic transformation from art as education to art as commodity by the school's administration. Another case that became highly profiled was Brandeis University, which decided to actually close the Rose Art Museum as a cost-cutting move, and part of this would have been selling off the collection. This resulted in a firestorm of negative publicity, and in this case, there's a happy ending. Not only did Brandeis decide to keep the museum, they decided to renovate it, so they responded very well to the otherwise unfavorable publicity. And the last case I wanted to mention is the most recent, March of 2014, the Delaware Art Museum announced plans to sell four works of art to bring in $30 million, and they needed this money to pay debts from a loan that the board had taken out to pay for a facility's expansion. Well, there was much criticism in the press. Delaware went ahead with the sale. Unfortunately for them, the sale raised only $19 million, not the $30 million that they had hoped for. The museum was sanctioned by the Association of Art Museum Directors, and it also lost its AAM accreditation for this breach of ethics. So those are just some examples of recent controversies in museums. And at this point, I think it's probably a good idea to start with some, take up some of the questions. And so I see we've got at least one question over here already in the parking lot, and Susan, you can correct me if I'm not looking at these correctly. But the question is, what about repo objects? I presume that means reproduced objects, not those repossessed, that were mistakenly accessioned. It's been suggested to me that passed them along to our gift shop manager now that they've been deaccessioned. There is a little bit of an ethical principle here in that if the museum is perceived to be selling the same kinds of things it's collect in the gift shop, this can be a result in very bad publicity for your museum. This would probably be legal. Personally, I would check with a tax lawyer before I did that, and you might also look at the IRS website. IRS has a say in what you sell in your museum gift shop. Not everyone's aware of this, but as a nonprofit, you are limited to selling objects that relate to the mission of your museum. You may recall many years ago, I think it was the Museum of Modern Art did a big Monet exhibit and they were selling Monet baseballs, which of course is the baseball with the Monet painting on it. And this was called into question some museums that opened up satellite gift shops offsite were shut down by the IRS because this was considered acting like a for-profit hiding behind nonprofit status. So I would check with that. What about collections without museums or boards? Well, the collection is owned by someone and in that case you need to look at who owns that collection and how is it organized. Is it in fact part of a nonprofit organization in some way or is it organized as a for-profit? Let's see. I think I can scroll up. John, just let me tell people again, the recording, the PowerPoint slides and the handouts will be posted on the Connecting to Collections Care website probably by Monday. So you can look for all those things there. We can work back. We'll go back up to the top of the questions. So there you go. I see I have one about everyone's favorite, FIC, found in collections objects. A found in collections objects can be tricky. They of course can only be deaccessioned if they have been accessioned. The trick is finding out whether you are the actual owner of the object or not. Generally speaking, a found in collections object means that it has no catalog number, no accession number, nothing associated with it like that. If it was me, I would want to do a very thorough analysis of my records to make sure the object had never been accessioned, but at that point it doesn't have to be deaccessioned because you have not formally taken ownership of it and the museum would be free ethically to go ahead and sell it. So you have to make sure, though, that you do not have an easily identifiable owner. There are a number of states that have laws now that regulate found in collections objects. These are often referred to as old loans laws. I think 30-something states, there is a list in the most recent issue of museum registration methods. And your state law can help. If you're in a state that does not have state laws governing this, you can fall back on common law, which is common court practice, and deal with it in that way. So do we need to go back up to the top of the questions you said? We're at the top. You can see that there's a question from Lori Benson. What do you think of deaccessioning to fund salaries? This again, this is that area of what constitutes direct collections care. My personal opinion is that staff salaries are an obligation of the institution that they need to take care of. This should not be considered part of collections care. This is part of funding your staff, even if it's your collection staff. I know other people will disagree with me. The problem with using deaccessioning to fund salaries is where do you stop? You are, in effect, giving away the store, and I think we need to pay far more attention to honoring the terms of our public trust and not use them for such things as paying salaries. What about artifacts that are found in collections may never have been accessioned? Again, if it's not been accessioned, then you are pretty much free to do with it what you like. But you do need to check and make sure that you cannot find another easily identifiable donor. So as perhaps the province might have a law about abandoned property in Colorado, if you've had no contract, no proof of ownership for seven years, the museum can claim ownership in deaccession. And this is fairly common law. The laws vary slightly from state to state. I do advise you to look up the law in your state, but they are to be pretty much alike. Let's go ahead. Excuse me, Johnny. You should check. Often there are two sets of laws. One is an abandoned property law that's related to museums and cultural institutions, and one is general abandoned property. I know in New Mexico, we have those two sets of laws, and one applies to cultural objects, and the other applies to, you know, somebody abandons a couch in an apartment. That's a very good point, Susan, because those terms of ownership are very different. So you do want to make that distinction. Okay, and this person would like to second the question about using funds to pay staff salaries. And you can argue that, as I said, either way, my personal opinion is that that would not be a good use, but we're really going to have to wait for the commission organized by AAM to come up with their conclusions. If you're interested, I believe you can contact them through the AAM website and weigh in. Let's see. We're not allowed to earmark sales of specific items or collections for specific departments. It all goes into the general fund. So this often hamstrings us even when trying to deaccession something completely out of our scope. I presume that means that the funds that you would gain are not being applied to direct collections care, but going into a general fund from which collections care might be taken out. And again, that is legal, but I would find that unethical. Let's see. What about contractors that are needed for something that's pretty much undeniably direct collections care, extra conservators needed after a flood? I would find that to be an exception. I think that would be direct collections care when you're dealing with an emergency situation. But you might also think about balancing that need versus what is it you're deaccessioning, are you deaccessioning something that you didn't really need? Are you deaccessioning something because it's worth a lot of money and this will pay that bill? And have you exhausted all other possibilities for finding financial assistance to deal with your emergency? Are there standards or best practices for online auction sales of deaccessioned objects? I've not seen anything written out. I know AAMD has some guidelines. One thing I worry about is the association of the institutional name with those sales. The fact that an object was once owned by a museum can affect its price. It usually makes the price go up. It can give the impression that your institution is selling off the collection when it's not and can hurt you with donors. But as a general guideline, I would look for a reputable auction house and I would work through an agent, even though this will diminish your profits because you will have to pay a percentage to the agent. This will kind of give you a shield. And I've seen a couple of situations where museums did a perfectly ordinary routine deaccession and then turned to sell the things and for whatever reason the museum's name got associated with the sale. In one case, it was on eBay. In another case, it had an auction and it became this object from the such and such museum and had very bad feedback for the museum. Let's see. Does anyone have experience using eBay as a method of removal? I believe this question was posted the other day on the registrar's list as well. I have known museums that used eBay but never under the museum's name. Again, you know, I think this probably is a reasonable way to sell things but again, I would work through an agent and you can have a staff member do this and you can actually, there are eBay agents who will sell things for you, who will handle the bid process and all of that. What do you do if other curators have deaccessioned items on paper but instead kept them physically in the collection? Well, that's an interesting one. If I would question why you're spending money to keep the things in the collection if they're deaccessioned. If they were legitimately deaccessioned by the curator, I would insist that those be removed. Either they're deaccessioned or they're not. If the curator's keeping them around because they're still useful as, for instance, teaching objects or training objects, then make sure that they are marked in that way and not considered part of the collection. That could be very confusing if you deaccession things and keep them. What if you don't know who the donor is but the item is founding collections object? That's fairly common. You, by English common law and by most of the state laws, you do have to make a good faith effort to determine the donor. These standards vary law by law. This may require taking out a classified ad in some way. It may require a waiting period. It may require you to do a thorough check of your records, but there is a point where you can say you have made a good faith effort to find a donor and have not found one, and therefore you can get rid of it. Interesting point about not notifying the donor. What if the donor wants to try to get it back? We know that will be problematic. In some instances, museums will notify the donor or the donor's family that the object has been deaccessioned and is going up on public auction, and they have the same opportunity at that point as any member of the public to try to get the object back. I think, although this sounds very noble that you're letting the donor know, I still go back to the issue of that affects the status of the gift. If it was a gift, it was a gift. A gift is free and clear. If you have a policy that allows donors to control a gift after they make the gift, you never really do receive the gift. The donor is always there in control. What if the donor comes in and says, well, I gave you that object 10 years ago. I want you to exhibit it now permanently. That wasn't a precatory restriction at the time, but that's a donor's desire. Would you follow that? Probably not. Although these are well-intentioned, I think they can have a lot of bad effects. If you know, for example, this was a family object that was donated by a family, and the family is still active in the community, that might be considered an extenuating circumstance, but it can get very complicated very quickly. You also don't know what will happen. What if you notify a donor that you're going to deaccession the object, give it to the donor, or the donor turns around and sells it? You would then not have made that money yourself. Let's see. I don't know if it's different for a living history village. Sometimes natural science collections will deaccession things, but retain them to hand out to kids or put in teaching collections. I think this is common in all museums that objects from the collection that are not considered suitable for the permanent collection do get used and particularly as teaching aids, I personally don't think museums giving things to children or other visitors is a very good idea. I think museums need to stress the importance of maintaining these objects in their collections, and when you turn around and give them to children, that might be good. You're doing a nice thing for the kid, but you're also telling the kid, well, nothing in the collection is permanent. We might just give you stuff out of it. It's perfectly legal, but I don't think it's a good idea. Let's see. Can we scroll down here to the next question then? I've been erasing them. I'm sorry. I missed that, Susan. I've been erasing them as we go. Right. I didn't see that you had. I'm sorry. We have a history of collecting large groups of things that haven't been thoroughly assessed before arrival. I'm told our choice was all or nothing. Advice. It sounds like you are not the person making the decisions. A collections plan and a good accessioning policy, an accessioning policy that says all objects taken and have to fit the collections plan. A collections plan that very carefully defines what your resume takes and does not take is your best defense. There are times when you will be overridden and by someone higher up in the administration or by a board. When that happens, you really have no choice but to take the things. If you can make the division before things are accessioned, you receive a gift, take out those things you want, accession them, do not accession the others and get rid of them is one way to do it. If everything has to be accessioned, then you have to turn around and go through the deaccessioning process. If this is happening, often you need to sit down with whoever is doing this, your board, your leadership and have a discussion about why this reflects badly. I know that in a lot of university museums, this is a fairly common occurrence. What will happen is someone in the development office or the dean's office will accept a gift on behalf of a museum without the museum being consulted and it creates a nightmare ahead of you. Okay. How is it handled if the donor took some kind of tax write off? If the donor took a tax benefit from the donation and it was within three years, you would need to fill out the form with IRS and notify the donor. If the donor is taking a tax benefit, you should have filled out the form already for the donor. The donor can't merely claim that they gave an object to you. The donor will have to have a form saying that you received the object that was donated. You should be able to know that. You can always fill out the form just in case the donor took a tax benefit. If you don't know whether the donor did or not, you notify IRS and it then becomes a problem between the IRS and the donor. Not all donors take a tax benefit. Not all donors take the full tax benefit. It will depend on the owner's taxes that year. I think that now donors are required to have certified appraisals. Depends on the value of the object. There are standards, and those standards have varied over the years by the amount. I don't recall the most recent amounts, but if you go to the IRS website that's very clearly listed out there, there's a cut-off dollar amount. I believe it used to be under $500. Appraisal is not required, and then the difference between $500 and $5,000 required one level of appraisal and over $5,000 another. I don't know what the current law is, but that's easy to find. I think that's right still. But now the kind of appraisals are much more stringent than they were even two or three years ago. That is true, and that's because of a lot of fraud. That's IRS responding to problems created by people taking a bigger tax benefit than they should have. So when you see these changes, keep in mind why those changes are being made and understand the importance of doing that. This is off topic for that, but I will caution people when they get into the area of appraisal to be very, very careful in your conversations with donors. You are not allowed to make an appraisal or share an appraisal with a donor. You're not even allowed to recommend an appraiser to a donor, because that is a conflict of interest. If a donor needs appraisal, tell them to go look up appraisers on the internet. You might point out that there are two professional associations, but beyond that, you may not recommend an appraiser to a donor. How do you destroy firecracked rock? That's a good question. First, I'd wonder why you wanted to do that, and secondly, I'd get a sledgehammer. Let's see. Non-profit IRS says items of insignificant value can be returned. Sometime each IRS individual can have a different value. I did have insignificant value. That is true, but insignificant value usually refers to a below a certain free market value. Every object has free market value. You may think some objects don't, but they do, and one way to look at that is to go online and look at the prices things you're selling for. Even your firecracked rock, someone is going to be selling one somewhere, or you can figure out how much it costs to get that firecracked rock to your museum and figure out a value for it. Insignificant, you can also ask IRS what they consider insignificant, and they should be able to give you a cutoff like under $500 under $100. Let's see. How do we destroy? I have textiles and books. They need to be destroyed. One way to do it is by burning. Another way to do it is by shredding. It will depend on the materials the object are made of and why it needs to be destroyed. If these are things that pose a safety hazard, you might have to destroy them by going through a company that deals in hazardous wastes. Who destroys them and what documentation do you need? Who destroys them depends on what it is being destroyed and how dangerous they are. The documentation, it's recommended that you have a witnessed destruction. A person from the museum, they're present at the destruction and you're often encouraged to bring in a neutral witness and outside witness as well. You can also photograph the discussion and keep all that information in the files. One thing we haven't mentioned is when an object is deaccessioned, you should rather keep the records of that object so that you no longer have it. You should label the records that the object was deaccessioned. You should include the documentation of the deaccession, but those records should never go away and the photographs of the destruction can be part of that documentation. If an object has an accession number on it and is being deaccessioned, do you remove the number? This is another one of those controversies. My personal opinion is yes, you do because the accession number can affect the price because it can make the object seem more valuable. The other reason is that accession number will make people wonder in the future if this object was really deaccessioned or not. Was it maybe stolen, maybe loaned to someone and then that somehow wound up in the market? I'm all for that. Other people want to keep the number on so they can identify the object. I personally think the object should be thoroughly photographed, the deaccession report, and the accession number removed and then not reused. See, a museum used, let's see, volunteer retained the numbers in the databases and noted it was destroyed, prevents confusion. Yes, exactly. By retaining the accession number or the catalog number and retaining the records of the object and labeling them as deaccessioned and destroyed, that does help you prevent problems. I think this next one we answered already. I believe we did. Let's move down to the next one. I believe we actually addressed the next one as well, collections without museums or boards. You have to go back to who is the owner of that collection. Can we discuss the pros and cons of selling deaccessioned objects through eBay versus traditional auction houses? Well, eBay does have that kind of trailer park reputation for a lot of people. But it depends on how it's handled. Again, I would work through an agent and whether it goes to an auction or eBay might depend on how much you hope to make off the object or how much the object is worth. If it's relatively low value, it may not be financially worthwhile to go through an auction house. But I would in either case personally I would use a third-party agent. Let's see. Do you think storage materials and shelving of objects can be considered direct care? Yes, I would think that would be direct care because those are providing supports and storage furniture that will help you take better care of the objects in the future. I would certainly include those. We have a strange collection. Large signs from which pieces have broken off. Think light bulbs and neon bulbs. I have boxes of bulbs. I would love to make part of the education collection, but I'm nervous since they're part of accessioned signs. Any advice? Well, do the boxes of extra bulbs you have are they historically congruent with the signs? Would you need them at some point in the future to replace burned out or broken lights in those signs, or would you not do that? If the boxes of light bulbs are always going to be just that boxes of extra light bulbs, then I would go ahead and deaccession boxes of extra light bulbs you do not need. If you might use them reasonably in making those signs look better for an exhibition, for example, or to restore historical integrity, then that would be a reason to keep them. A donation was given with the clause that the institution or their specific use were debating whether they meant that it could be deaccessioned and transferred to another local entity. How would you interpret that wording? That's a good question. I would think for their specific use would mean just that, the specific use of that institution. But that might be one where you need to consult a lawyer before you make your decision to make sure it would not be considered a precatory restriction. I think that's another one that you could probably argue both ways on. That might depend also on the value of the object. Since the A.M. Collections Exchange Center no longer exists, has anything taken its place? What I have seen is that both on Museum L and on the Registrar's Group, people have from time to time posted lists of objects that they are deaccessioning or planning to deaccession that are available and offered them to other museums. A lot of museums work directly with sister institutions, so when they deaccession an object, they contact nearby museums that have similar kinds of things and offer them to them. I have not seen any kind of clearing house pop up. I think when the A.M. Clearing House started, people thought this was going to be extremely useful and it turned out just not to draw on much response from the community, but I think in the way we communicate today, probably the lists serves such as RCA A.M. and Museum L and other more specific lists serves are probably a more reasonable way to go to get that information out in front of your colleagues. Does anyone have suggestions for impressing upon boards and other staff members the immense importance of ethics beyond the legal requirements? Ethics by definition are always beyond legal requirements and you can do this a couple of ways and one of which is you can ask your board to help you write an ethics a code of ethics or go over your code of ethics and review it and come in prepared with examples. You can easily find examples these days in the news media of problems that are ethical in nature. They originated because someone did something unethically. A great source of this kind of article is Global Museum which has a news feature that changes every week. It usually has around 20 stories in it and a lot of those are ethical things but I would look for real life examples from real museums and bring those to my board and say what would you do if and here is a problem that could have been resolved by this example. I would also talk to them about what ethics are. Ethics are standards of conduct above and beyond that is legal that are determined by the community. So your museum codes of ethics weren't dreamed up by some person sitting in a closed room. They came about through practice, through people's collective practice and experience being pooled together to figure out how to prevent problems from being solved. Are there any examples of museums deaccessioning or removing a lot of large objects at once, hundreds or more? Well sure, Nagbra. A lot of museums wound up doing massive deaccessions to return both sacred objects and human remains to the rightful tribes during Nagbra. There are other examples like that. It's not very common fortunately because that would indicate in other cases other than something like Nagbra it would indicate a very bad collecting plan. If you don't capitalize your collection view the collection as a financial asset can you sell the deaccession items? Sure, because you're only selling those that you deaccession. The capitalization of collections is quite controversial. A few years ago the counting board wanted to make museums add up their collections and count them as assets. Finally they were talked out of it by AAM. Capitalization of collections is generally considered to be a very bad idea. There's some strong statements from AASLH and AAMD about this out there. You are only dealing with the capitalization of those objects that you deaccession not with the rest of your collection. What if you have a donor that wants the object up on display or else they want it back and there's no deed of gift in the file? If there's no deed of gift the burden is upon the donor to prove that that is a condition for the donation. If the donor cannot produce some documentation in the form of a letter or something like that then you are not obliged to do that and this becomes then a personnel issue How important is that donor to you? How reasonable is it to exhibit that? My experience has been when donors want things exhibited permanently there's usually something else going on. The donor is for instance doesn't believe your museum will take good care of the object or they want the glory of that object there and if you sit down with them and talk to them about the issue maybe take them into collection storage show them how you take care of things how many objects you have and get to the root of that problem maybe a placard somewhere in the museum acknowledging their donation would be acceptable in lieu of putting an object on permanent donation you can explain to the donor that it's better to take an object off exhibit and then return it from time to time because then it attracts people because it has come out of storage and has not been seen for a while so I would try first talking through the issue with the donor and see if you can figure out what the actual issue is. Let's see we have furniture in our collection that is accessioned that is being used in our cafe for public use I keep stressing it needs to be deaccession I think that's a very good point because if you're using the furniture in the cafe that's not taking very good care of it and I think you can go to the board and say this is an abrogation of the board's duty to care for the collection it's if furniture is something that you don't mind being accessioned and used in the cafe that it's not critical to the collection I would do it and I would point out that if the furniture is damaged this is going to reflect very badly on your museum standard of care of its collections but if it's just old furniture it won't. Let's see what are your thoughts on the Corcoran National Gallery of Art GW University situation I have a bit of conflict of interest I have done some a little bit of teaching for a colleague at the Corcoran and I do not think that is a very happy situation at all for those of you who don't know the Corcoran ran into an issue of a debt that the board could not get out of they were finally taken over by GW by George Washington University in the National Gallery their collection is being divided up some is going to the National Gallery no one is sure what will happen to some of the objects that are more or less permanently in the Corcoran building but that is perfectly legal I might point out that no laws have been broken and it is a most unfortunate case and this goes back to the management of the Corcoran board why did the board allow a debt that size to accumulate but it's a very a very sad situation let's see I wonder if some and I don't want to comment further on that because I do have some close friends involved on both sides of that issue see I wonder if some of the deaccession objects can be used for conservators in training oh yes that is quite common and a lot of places that teach not just conservation but just teach basic collections care are thrilled to receive objects from museums to use in training students so if you have objects you think might fall into that category I would look into what museum studies programs are either in your area or that you would care to support contact their director see if they would like to have those objects I know that when I teach collection management classes I easily wind up bringing objects from my own personal collection into the classroom for students to use because the places I teach for generally don't have them available it would be great if they did those are objects that students can handle and use and learn to mark and it was going to produce a much better generation of collection specialist if an outside contractor is appraising your collection is it unethical for them to recommend methods of disposal or potential buyers recipients that is a very interesting question I think it would be a conflict of interest for an appraiser to recommend a purchaser so I don't think I would want to deal with an appraiser who offered to do that because the conflict of potential you know we want to avoid two things in museums as part of transparency one is conflicts of interest which are real the other is the appearance of a conflict of interest because the appearance of a conflict of interest can have very negative results in terms of publicity and how people see your museum and what kind of faith they have in it and this is a case of even if the appraiser did not have a conflict and was doing this out of the kindness of their heart it looks like it it certainly looks like they're favoring one purchaser over another so I would think that would not be acceptable any suggestions for listservs in terms of I presume this refers to posting lists of collections Museum L of course is a big one it's very widely read I believe there's around 4,000 subscribers now the registrar's listserv R-C-A-A-M anyone can be on that listserv you do not have to be a member of the registrar's committee there are other listservs there are natural history collections there's NH Coal I know there are many others for specific types of collections so I would look out and see what's available when sending deaccession materials to auction is it okay to use the proceeds from the sale to offset the cost of packaging and shipping the materials hmm that's an interesting question because of course that's not really direct care of the collection is it I would think that I don't know that that does puzzle me because it's not direct care of the collection but it is part of the cost of disposal and it's another one of those I think can be argued from either side I would imagine that this is probably not that much different ethically from paying a fee to an agent to sell the object so that probably would be acceptable I keep saying probably because I am not really an ethicist you can ask Sally Yerkovich about these questions possibly let's see what are the credit lines for new acquisitions purchased from proceeds from deaccession sales that depends on the museum a lot of museums will actually say on the credit line purchased from deaccession funds that tends to draw attention to the deaccessioning funds and some museums don't like to do that because they like to keep their deaccessioning make it not quite so obvious it depends on your institution and what you are comfortable with that also can be a way to appease a donor if you have deaccessioned an object and a donor has complained to you that I gave you that and why did you get rid of it offering to give them a credit line on the object or objects that are purchased with those funds can often satisfy that donor and make them realize that their donation even though deaccession is still serving the museum let's see and here is a suggested format in answer to that museum purchase gift of name of donor by exchange and that is a very nice way to put it that does not use the word deaccession the answer back to that is what if there are 35 names on the original credit line well you are going to wind up with a very long label let's see is it ethical to convert accessioned objects from the main collection into a new educational collection yes I think it is because the museum is still using those objects to achieve its mission but it is recognizing that the standard of collections care will be different once those become an educational collection and so I think that is perfectly legit to do that okay I think that's all the questions that's all the questions and we still have six minutes left right before we leave you today I want to remind you that our next webinar is in two weeks and it's about holiday parties in the museum and please fill out the evaluation the evaluations are really important and I study all of them so please do look at them I would like to add don't forget there are two handouts for this session one on sources of information and the other is some information from things great and small on deaccessioning policies and I would like to thank all 297 of you who participated and a special thanks to Susan Barger and Mike Morneau for their help in making this a very painless webinar for me to present I couldn't have done it without you and I really appreciate how easy you've made it thank you and there's actually one handout I combined them both so you can look for the handout the power point presentation the recordings I'll probably get them up to you by Monday they'll be on the website so thank you all for coming we had almost 400 people today so thanks a lot