 It's a microphone over to our host, Susan Berger from the FAIC. Go ahead, Susan. Morning, everyone, or good afternoon, wherever you are. And we're happy to welcome you here to this webinar series that we are co-hosting with ARCs. I'm very pleased about that. So I just am going to go through my things very quickly. There's a lot of stuff in our website. So go there and check it out. We have many, many resources. A lot of we have a discussion where you can ask questions and get answers. And there are also over 120 webinar recordings that you can access for free. OK, let me see if I can do anything about my sound. I hope that's better. And you can check out our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter. And if you're not on the Connecting to Collections Care announce list, you can go to this website and subscribe. And you'll only get a message maybe once or twice a month to let you know about what's coming up. And you can always contact me. This is my email address. And what we have coming up in this series with ARCs is next week we're going to do something on ethical issues and collections management. And then a month after that, we're going to do one on deaccessioning. And that's part of this series. And then on Mayday, we're going to do something entirely different. We're going to do a Facebook live with the Heritage Emergency Responders from FAIC. So if you go to the website, you can get the information about how to do that. And now I'm going to turn this over to John Simmons, who is our presenter for today. And I'm going to let him introduce himself. Well, thank you very much, Susan and Mike. And welcome, everyone, to the series of webinars we're doing on legal issues in museums. What we'll do in this webinar is present an overview of museum law with an emphasis on the most important laws that affect museum collections. The law is very complex. And so unfortunately, we will not have time to get into a lot of detail on any one topic. But instead, what we will try to do is give you a broad overview of those legal aspects of museums that affect collections. If there are specific areas of museum law that you would like to see us do a webinar to address, please contact us and let us know or put a comment there in the questions and comment boxes. And one important caveat, I am not a lawyer, so please do not take anything that I say as legal advice. And in fact, in general, legal advice should not be done on a do-it-yourself basis. If you do have a serious legal issue in your museum, the best thing to do is consult with a lawyer who is an expert in that area. Perhaps it was best said by the late Stephen Wheel, who said, our laws are too complex and the consequences of misunderstanding them too grave to make it thinkable that the legal aspects of museum management should be based on anything less than the best available professional advice. As Susan mentioned, there are two webinars coming up. I'd like to mention before we get started, on April 19, Dr. Sally Jorkovich, who is the director of the Institute of Museum Ethics at Seton Hall University, will present a webinar called Ethical Issues in Collection Management. And Sally is the author of A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics, which was just published in 2016, just last year. And then coming up on May 17, Leslie Jones, who is the vice president for museum affairs and the curator of decorative arts at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, will do a webinar on the disposal of deaccessioned objects entitled, Why Do We Have This Insight on Hindsight of Deaccessioning Initiatives? And for those who might have missed it, there has been one previous webinar on deaccessioning, which was presented in November of 2015. And that is archived on the Connecting to Collections website. So let's begin with taking a look at the sources of our laws. Laws and regulations refer to the systems of rules of a country, a state, a city, or other government entity that regulate the actions of the members of the community and are enforced by the imposition of penalties. The laws and regulations that affect museums come from several different sources. There is constitutional law, and that is both at the federal and the state level, for those of us who live in the United States. There's statutory law, which, again, is federal, state, and also local statutes and ordinances. There is what's called case law or common law, which comes through the courts. And then there are administrative rules and regulations. And lastly, there are international laws and regulations that are based on treaties and accords. Constitutional law refers to the law enshrined in the federal and state constitutions. So a constitution is a compact or an agreement between the citizens and their government. So the Constitution of the United States guarantees the basic rights of the citizens. It defines the authority or the power of the government. And it's the framework for how our three branches of government operate. And this brings us to our first quiz. What are the three branches of government established by the Constitution of the United States? And you have a multiple choice here. We'll give you a few minutes to see how many of you remember your high school civics lessons. Not doing too badly right now. It's looking pretty good. I'd say you are a pretty alert group. All right. So we've closed the poll now. And the correct answers are the legislative, the judicial, and the executive branches. So what the US Constitution does is it sets minimal standards that all the state governments must comply with. What this means is that a state constitution can expand the rights of citizens beyond those of the US Constitution, but a state government cannot restrict those rights. So constitutional law is concerned with the guarantees provided by the US Constitution and the state constitutions and the limits of government power. The 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution is the one that says any powers not delegated to the federal government and not prohibited by the Constitution are delegated to state governments. You may ask why we're going into this level of detail for museum law, because in many cases, museum law has actually acted out at the state level rather than the federal level for this very reason. And this might be expected state constitutions very widely from one state to another. So what may be a state law affecting a museum collection in one state may be rather different in another. Statutory law refers to federal, state and local laws and ordinances and regulations that are enacted by some legislative body. When a local or state law conflicts with the federal law, the federal law usually preempts the state or local law, but this has to be tested in court. The federal statutory laws make up what's called the United States Code, which is abbreviated USC. And you'll see this a lot. So here's what this abbreviation means. What you're looking at on the screen means section 43 of the United States Code sections 2101 to 2106. And of course, with the internet, we can now Google those simply by the USC abbreviation if you want to find out the, find the text of any of particular federal laws. And in many states, you can do the same with your state laws. Case law or common law are laws that are established by the outcomes of court cases that determine how the laws are to be interpreted. And case law, of course, comes from federal, state and local courts. The phrase common law comes from the fact that case law reflects the most common outcomes of judicial decisions. Administrative law, or those promulgated by state and federal agencies, federal rules, for example, are published in the Code of Federal Regulations, the CFR, and there are similar publications for the state rules and regulations. So if you ever need to go and look up the source of a law to see exactly what is said, these are the sorts of sources that you would turn to. International law refers to rules and accords agreed to by different nations by treaty. In the museum world, the ones we are usually concerned with are those that affect either the acquisition, the export, or the import of objects or international trade and the objects that we might have in our museums. With that whirlwind tour, we're looking at sources of law. We will now turn our attention to the laws that affect museums. Museums are subject to the same laws as any other nonprofit institutions. Museum law is not a specialized set of laws written just for museums, but rather refers to all laws that affect museums. You can think of museum legal issues as those that affect how the museum is legally organized and governed. The obligation of the museum's governing authority to make sure that collections are cared for in the public trust. The acquisition, accessioning, and de-accessioning of collection objects and of course public health and public and staff health and safety. So all of these laws do affect museums. Museum law can really be grouped into five main areas. There is governance, which has to do with funding and tax issues. Administrative law, which has to do with finance. There are the personnel and workplace issues, which as I mentioned are primarily health and safety. There are museum collections and collection management issues, primarily related to the acquisition and use of the objects in our collections. And then there are intellectual property issues and we're primarily in museums, we deal with copyright, but there are a few others as well. So we'll take a quick look at these one by one. We'll begin with governance. And there's a fairly deceptively simple question. What is a museum? The courts of the United States have long considered a museum to be a repository or a collection. However, when the Institute of Museum Services, which of course is now known as the Institute of Museum and Library Services was founded, there was a legal definition used. So we actually have a legal definition of museum enshrined in United States law. That definition is a museum as a private or public nonprofit agency or institution, organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational or aesthetic purposes, which utilizing a professional staff owns or utilizes tangible objects, cares for them and exhibits them to the public on a regular basis. So that's the definition. The definition most widely outside the United States is probably the one from the International Council of Museums. That definition says a museum is a nonprofit making permanent institution in the service of society and of its development and open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environments. So you'll notice certain similarities in these two definitions. One of which is the emphasis as own museums as nonprofit organizations. Well, for most of the history of museums, there was no such designation as nonprofit. The earliest museums were privately owned with government-owned public museums not becoming common until well after the 1800s. Legal nonprofit status in the United States did not actually come about until the mid 20th century. So these definitions are not reflective of the long history of museums, but rather how museums are today. In terms of museums in the United States, we can group them into three categories. The first is the for-profit museums, which are privately owned either by an individual or by a corporation, and they are managed as business enterprises. So any income that the institution makes is paid to the owners. So if you go into a Ripley's, believe it or not, auditorium or another private museum, your entrance fee essentially goes into the pockets of the owners of that company. The second category are private nonprofit museums. These are privately owned institutions that are granted certain tax benefits or tax exemptions, and any income they make has to be reinvested in the museum. And the third category are the public museums. These are government-controlled or government-owned institutions managed by a government, so that could be federal, state, county, city, or some other government entity, which brings us to another quiz question here. Non-profit means that the institution is funded by the government. True or false? And I see we're getting a lot of good answers. Looks like true or false, rather, is definitely winning out. You would be surprised how many people believe that actually this is true, that non-profit means funded by the government. And in fact, non-profit does not mean funded by the government. Some non-profit institutions receive government funding, others do not. Many of them are entirely self-funded. So here's a related question. A non-profit museum cannot charge admission. Is this true or false? And again, we'll have, here we go. You can vote on this, and again, you are voting pretty much as a block, interesting. So this is one that often trips up, I've noticed, students in my classes. They often believe that non-profits are not allowed to charge admission, which of course is false. Your non-profit status has nothing to do with your admission charges. All right, here's another one. A non-profit museum must have a board of directors. Is this true or false? So I see we're getting some disagreement on this one, but looks like the majority of you believe that this statement is true. Give you another minute here to run up the votes. All right, we'll move on here. Well, this is true. The type of board that is responsible for the non-profit is going to vary with its legal organization. But in general, all non-profits have a board of some sort, although their duties and responsibilities are going to vary with the legal organization of the museum. In the case of a college or university-based museum, the museum is usually governed by the board that runs the academic institution, which is going to be many layers of administration removed from the museum to the point that the museum staff may rarely even have contact with the board. Oh, OK, we have another question for you. How much is a non-profit museum allowed to pay its employees? Minimum wage, less than for-profits pay. It depends on the institutional budget, or they can pay as much as they want. I will say that all my life I wish to work with one of those museums in category D and never did. OK, we're getting a little more diverse opinion here. Give this poll another few minutes to run. Give everybody a chance to vote. Oh, OK. So the answer, of course, is D. Non-profits can pay their employees whatever they want. In practice, the salaries at nonprofit organizations tend to be lower than those incomparable for-profit organizations for several reasons, including the fact that most non-profits have fairly modest budgets relative to their mission. But in general, there are no limits on how much a non-profit can pay its employees or pay its director. OK, and one more question. How much income is a non-profit allowed to earn each year? None because they operated a loss. None because of the government funding they receive, or is there even a limit? OK, again, we have a very quick agreement on this one. Looks like. OK, and of course, the answer is C, that there is no limit on how much a non-profit can earn as long as the income is used to fulfill its mission. So what differentiates a non-profit from a for-profit is that a non-profit must spend its earnings to fulfill its mission, so there's no reason that a museum with an appropriate business plan could not be entirely self-supporting. And a lot of people in the general public are unaware of this. If you ask the same questions to an audience of non-museum people, you would get very different answers. I know this because I've tried. I like to shock people by pointing out that until 2015, the National Football League, the NFL, was a non-profit organization despite the fact it earned more than $300 million a year and it paid its commissioner $45 million a year in salary. The main reason the NFL made the change just last year to become a for-profit organization was they wanted to get away from the rules that required them as a non-profit to report how much they paid their commissioner and other employees. That was the main reason they switched over. But in the public in general is unaware of what it means to be non-profit, and so these are points you might want to bring up with your visitors and the members of your museum at some point. In the United States, most non-profit museums are what are called 501C3 organizations, and by law they have to serve the greater good of society. This distinction of 501C3 refers to a classification that's granted by the Internal Revenue Service, and if you're curious about what that entails, you can read about it on the IRS website, and there's a link to that in the handout. What's important to remember is that any money a non-profit earns needs to be put back into fulfilling the mission. So all the money a non-profit makes has to be spent on operating the museum, paying utility bills to staff, taking care of the exhibits, the collections, bringing in new exhibits, maintaining the building and so forth. But by contrast, the money that a for-profit museum makes goes directly to the institution's owners, which could be an individual or a corporation. So it's important to this distinction, I think, and another one that the general public often doesn't understand is that the collections of a for-profit museum are financial assets. The objects in the collections can be bought and sold at any time, and the proceeds of those sales go directly to the owners. By contrast, in a non-profit, the collections are held in the public trust for the benefit of the public. See, the doctrine of public trust is a very ancient common law principle. It dates back to the time of the Roman emperor Justinian, and it says that certain resources are important enough to be held in common for the benefit of everyone. And this is the basis for the concept in law in the United States that says museums are charitable tax-exempt institutions. They are recognized to hold their collections in trust for the benefit of the public in general. And of course, all these affect the way we operate museums. Looking at administration, most of the laws and regulations that museums have to comply with are the same as those that any other public or non-profit institution must comply with. For example, there are many ways that the governance structure of a museum can be organized, but basically, a museum has to file some sort of articles of incorporation in the state. It is organized in, and these articles of incorporation determine how the corporation will operate and establish its legal name and help it gain tax-exempt status from the internal revenue service. The personnel and workplace issues in most museums are regulated by OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administrative Department, or a state-level OSHA equivalent. In the states, many have equivalent or in excess regulations of OSHA and therefore OSHA-exempt, but these regulations are there and you are still safeguarded in the workplace. There are other personnel and workplace issues, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, which affects public access to museums and how the employees work behind the scenes. Because information on public access is readily available from other sources, we're not going to go into that aspect of the law, but I would like to mention that the issue of disabled access in museum collections can become somewhat contentious. Due to the nature of collection storage, retrofitting storage areas to meet ADA requirements can be a serious problem. However, the ADA is fairly flexible and museums can often work with it. For example, it may not be necessary that all storage areas be handicapped accessible if there are accessible work areas where regularly scheduled staff can work and there is someone that can bring objects from inaccessible areas out to them. So there are often ways to work with this law to make accommodations, particularly for old buildings and storage areas. There are, as I mentioned, a number of intellectual property issues museums have to contend with. Intellectual Property refers to the products of human intelligence that are unique and have potential commercial value. So this includes ideas, designs, inventions, literary works, unique names, industrial processes, and even computer programs. Copyright Protection begins with the creation of an original work. The copyright protection is extended to the lifetime of the creator. The creator does not have to apply for copyright or file any documents, merely creating the work starts the process. In general, copyright protection then extends for the creator's life plus 70 years after the death of the creator. However, the creator of a work does not always receive copyright. If it's a case of work for hire, where a creator of a work is contracted by a museum to create something, often it's the employer who becomes owner of the copyright of that work, and that needs to be spelled out in the contract. Ownership of copyright includes the exclusive right to reproduce the work, prepare derivative work, to distribute the work publicly, and for public performance, our display of works. This means the museum can often own an object but not own the right to reproduce it. This problem generally arises when someone wants to make use of an image or a reproduction of objects for advertising or to be used in a brochure and discovers that in fact they do not own the right to use the reproduction of that image. A standard loan of copyrighted work from one museum to another does not include a transfer of copyright. If copyright is to be transferred, then that needs to be spelled out in the loan conditions for that loan. There are some exceptions to copyright. One of them is the fair use doctrine which says that copyrighted works can be used for certain purposes without obtaining permission from the copyright owner, but figuring out exactly what fair use is is tricky because it's not clearly defined. Fair use is defined as the use by reproduction of copyrighted works for criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, including multiple copies for classroom use, scholarship or research, as long as it's not of a commercial nature, which is not a very satisfying definition. Among the factors that help you establish whether your use is fair use or not are the purpose and character of the use. For example, is it commercial or is it nonprofit or educational? The nature of the copyrighted work itself, the amount and substantiality of the work that is used, that is reproduced, and the effect of the use on the potential market value of the copyrighted work. So before images of any object in a collection are used in a publication or in promotional materials, it's really important that the museum determine who owns the copyright and make sure either they have permission to do that or that it will fall within the fair use doctrine. Another one that often trips up museums, having to do with intellectual property is VARA, which is the Visual Artist Rights Act of 1990. So this is relatively new in museum terms. VARA has been described as the first copyright legislation to protect the moral rights of artists by granting them certain rights to their work, no matter who owns the copyright. And VARA is effective for the life of the artist plus 50 years unlike copyright, which goes for 70 years. So for example, an artist may protect the attribution of a work or prevent the destruction of a work even if that work has been sold to someone else. So a living artist can stop someone from destroying a work that they have created. VARA was written specifically to cover paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and photographic images. Produced as single works for exhibition are in limited signed and numbered additions of less than 200 copies. So there are some serious restrictions on what's protected. Under VARA, the living artist retains the right to have their works correctly attributed, meaning someone else can't take credit for them, to have their works maintained without alteration, to have their works protected from destruction even when another party owns the work. And VARA rights cannot be transferred to another person, but they can be waived in part by the artist by means of a written and signed document. So this is one of those, if you run into what you think might be an issue with VARA in your museum, you would be wise to consult a copyright or intellectual property rights attorney to make sure that this would not be in conflict with a living artist. There are many laws that affect museum collections and collections management. So we'll look at some of these, and basically what this will do is reinforce the importance of good record keeping as part of collections management. The first one we'll look at is the Antiquities Act of 1906. This protects historic ruins on public lands from being destroyed or damaged. It was passed in response to some severe cases of vandalism at Casa Grande ruins in Arizona and because of concerns about the protection of Mount Vernon in Virginia. The Historic Sites Act of 1935 was passed to strengthen the Antiquities Act of 1906 by making it a national policy to preserve for public use historic sites, buildings, and objects of national significance for the inspiration and benefit of the people of the United States. That was followed by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979, which expanded the Antiquities Act to protect archeological resources and sites on public land and on Indian land by prohibiting the sale, purchase, transport, exchange, or receipt of archeological resources removed without permission. Now all these acts that I'm going to mention, all of these laws are listed on the handout along with some citations for them on the internet so you don't have to write these down if you want to follow up, you can do that from the handout. So we see a pattern here of a beginning to establish legislation to protect historic sites and then being extended into other areas. Most of us in the museum world are familiar with these basic protections. The Pre-Columbian Act of 1972 prohibits the importation of pre-Columbian material without a certificate of export from the country of origin. And often these certificates of export can be very difficult to get, but importing the materials without them is very risky. There are a number of pieces of legislation that most people think primarily affect natural history museums but actually are much more far-reaching. The prime one of these is what's called the Lacey Act. The Lacey Act was passed in 1900. Two of all things control the trade in bird feathers. At that time, feather collectors were devastating while bird populations to meet the demands for feathers for women's hats. The Lacey Act was subsequently extended to cover most animal and many plant species. In essence, the Lacey Act prohibits the import, export, transportation, sale, receipt, acquisition or purchase of any animal or plant that was obtained or transported in violation of any other law or regulation. So this is very broad, very sweeping. In effect, the Lacey Act enforces the laws and regulations of other countries by preventing the importation of illegally obtained specimens of plants or wildlife. So if a plant or a wildlife specimen was collected illegally in, say, Peru and then imported into the United States, it would fall under the Lacey Act because it was initially collected illegally. This includes objects that contain parts of animals or illegally collected animals or plants, including works of art, historical objects and ethnographic objects. And this is where many museums run afoul of the law because they assume that the Lacey Act is only in effect for natural history when, in fact, it extends to any parts of these animals or plants that would be involved with any other object. Perhaps the best known of the laws that affect animals is cites. This is the convention on international trade and endangered species of wild flora and fauna, established in 1973. The purpose was to protect species that were threatened by international commercial trade by regulating and monitoring their import and export. And this is a key part. This only protects species threatened by international trade, not those that are threatened by habitat loss or something like that. The protected species are listed in three different appendices. Each appendix has a different level of protection. Compliance societies means that if you have a cites-listed specimen, moving that across an international border are in the case of cites one-listed specimens, but within the United States, means you have to have a special permit. And this includes objects owned alone. Anything containing ivory, bone, teeth, feathers, it would fall under cites. So some examples of the sorts of materials cites cover would be natural history specimens, but also anything containing ivory, bones, teeth. So it's, again, very far-sweeping. Many people confuse cites with the Endangered Species Act or the ESA because both cites and the ESA publish a list of protected species. But there is a difference. These two lists are not the same. It's important to remember cites is an international agreement that protects species affected by wildlife, by trade and wildlife. Endangered Species Act is US legislation, and it protects species whose habitats are threatened so they're threatened with extinction for some reason. It could be by trade, could be loss of habitat, could be any other reason that they're threatened where they occur. So this brings us to our next quiz, and this is an important one here. According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, what is a specimen? Is it a whole animal or a plant? Is it a preserved animal or a plant? Is it a any part? Or is it a scientific preparation of an animal or a plant? And I see that you're paying very close attention because everyone seems to have gotten it right. Yeah, and the correct answer, of course, is C, it is any part of an animal or a plant, and that includes bone, feathers, teeth, tusk, skin. So often when you receive a archaeological object, an ethnographic object, an historical object, a work of art, if it looks like it might have an animal or a plant part attached to it, you need to get that identified to find out whether or not it is covered. There are a number of other specialized laws that affect wildlife that we will not go into today because we really don't have time. The probably the best known is the African Elephant Conservation Act because this was passed especially for to control trade in ivory, and it was recently strengthened quite a bit that makes it now extremely difficult to move ivory about. There is also the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act Marine Mammal Protection Act, Migratory Bird Treaty Act, so a number of things like this that are out there. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, will probably be the subject of an upcoming webinar. This is another complex piece of legislation, but it basically affirms the rights of Native Americans and Native Hawaiians to claim custody of human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony that are in the control of federal agencies or museums that receive federal funding, which of course is almost all museums. It was signed into law in 1990. It requires museums that receive these federal funds or federal institutions to comply by creating an inventory of their Native American collections and human remains, and work with the appropriate tribes or other groups to see if these need to be repatriated. Pardon to remember that NAGPRA covers new acquisitions as well as past acquisitions, so all collections coming in must also conform to NAGPRA. There is the immunity from seizure judicial process of cultural objects imported for temporary exhibition or display. This is a statute that protects foreign-owned works of art and objects of cultural significance from being seized by a US court if they are imported into the United States for temporary exhibition. And so what was happening was museums would arrange for a loan in good faith, not understanding that an object might either be protected or someone might think that it's protected and then the object would be seized at US customs and tied up for quite a bit of time. So this is intended to get around that. It does not let people off the hook for importing things illegally, but in other words, but it does give them protection from being seized. The way it works is the borrower has to apply in advance to get the object cleared before it is imported, and that's the point where its legality will be checked. So again, this is fairly complex, and you'll need to look that one up if you want to use it. There are a few international laws and regulations that we have to think about. There was a 2006 article in Museum Magazine about international laws regulating cultural objects that concluded with these words. The law of this country has steadily evolved in the direction of enforcing foreign claims regarding antiquities and other objects protected by cultural patrimony laws. A healthy respect for the breadth of foreign law coupled with an eye for spotting gaps in the provenance of antiquities under consideration for acquisition can generally provide important protection against future claims. In other words, you need to know the law and understand what things are protected and how they are protected. So we'll take a look at the most significance of these international agreements. The first is the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. This goes back to 1954 and was the first significant international agreement designed to protect cultural property during wartime and by the protection that it provided was mostly against looting. As we have all seen during the Iraq War, this law is obviously not as effective as it needs to be. We saw extensive looting of the museums in Iraq and other areas of the Middle East. In the example of the photo that you see there, this was after looting, but the institutions were also not protected from being caught up in the armed conflict. So these laws are a good start, but greatly need to be strengthened. The next one that came along was the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which is in shorthand called the UNESCO Convention. It was passed in 1970. It was ratified in 1972, but did not become effective in the United States until Congress ratified it in 1983. So we were fairly late to sign on to this law. The UNESCO Convention makes certain forms of cultural property subject to seizure if they are imported into the US, but it also authorizes the president of the United States to enter into bilateral agreements with other countries to prohibit the importation of certain cultural property. And in contrast to the Hague Convention, the UNESCO Convention is focused on the peacetime destruction and looting of cultural property, particularly things that were obtained without permission from the country of origin, and later sold or imported into other countries. Another significant international agreement is the Unidroit Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, which dates to 1995. This was written to correct some loopholes in the 1970 UNESCO Convention. And it does that by making it easier to identify the current location of stolen cultural property, and that makes it then easier to recover. And this went into effect in the United States, and pardon me, went into effect worldwide in 1998, and it provides a means for a government to recover stolen or illegally exported property. And illegal cultural property includes objects that were illegally excavated, not just those that were stolen from another institution. Although the United States participated in the writing of this convention, our government has not yet ratified it, although 32 other countries have. So this is one we need to lean on our congressmen and senators to get busy on to sign on to the Unidroit Convention, because this will provide a lot of protection for cultural property from other countries. In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of attention paid to what are called Nazi-era objects. During the period of 1933 through the end of World War II in 1945, the German government carried out an extensive systematic program of theft, confiscation, and looting of cultural property in the countries they occupied. Some of the cultural property was sold, some of it was put into storage, some went into the private collections of various Nazi officials, and when the war ended, tens of thousands of the illegally obtained objects, mostly works of art, were recovered by the Allies, but a frighteningly large number of them never made it back to their rightful owners or the heirs of the rightful owners. Although it took many years of the heirs pressing their claims before serious attention began to be paid to the problem, most U.S. museums have now made great efforts to identify and return art that was plundered by the Nazis to its rightful owners or more often the descendants of those rightful owners. The American Alliance of Museums has led the way in this initiative with workshops, publications, and a website dedicated to the identification of Nazi-era art called the Nazi-era Internet Portal, and your museum can use that to help identify Nazi-era objects in the collections. And of course, this situation has gotten a lot of attention, particularly because of some recent books and movies on the subject. So this has been a whirlwind tour through a lot of legislation, and I didn't want to overwhelm you, but I wanted to give you an overview of what all's there. And this raises the question, what do you do when good museums go bad? How do you prevent this from happening? Well, as we discussed earlier, museums are public institutions, and museums do hold their collections in trust for the public. And when you think about it, that is a very awesome responsibility that museums have. Because museums are public institutions, accountability and transparency in our operations are critical. If the public cannot trust us, we lose all our credibility. So it's really important for museums to be as open and transparent as we can. Nevertheless, sometimes good museums go bad, or more accurately, people working in good museums sometimes go bad and do things they shouldn't. So what do you do when someone in the museum you work in goes over to the dark side, whether by on purpose or accident? What do you do if you find out that the curator has been importing objects illegally, or that the director has been caught siphoning off funds for personal use, or the registrar has been faking information in a catalog, or a volunteer has been stealing objects out of a store room. And these are, of course, seem like straightforward simple things until you find yourself in that situation. So a few things that you can do. The first is keep the collection documentation accurate and up to date, particularly information about where objects come from, where they were obtained, and where they are stored. No documentation is too trivial. Letters, sale receipts, copies of emails, anything that documents something about the object should be included in those registration records. Those registration records can make a huge difference if the museum discovered it has an illegal object or if someone challenges by claiming an object that they have as illegal, when in fact it is perfectly legal for the museum to have. So I can't emphasize that enough, but that documentation is critical. Second one is know your collection. Consider what sort of objects you have in your collection and make sure that you are aware of any laws and regulations that may affect those objects. And this would mean, for example, understanding how to recognize animal parts or plant parts that might be incorporated into historical objects or works of art, knowing where most of your collection originated, knowing more or less the time period in which things came into your museum. All of those can be factors in whether or not an object is in your museum legally. The third one is probably the most important, be legal. If you think a crime has been committed, contact the proper authorities to deal with it. This may mean dealing with your local police or maybe the state attorney general's office, depending on what the suspected crime is, perhaps dealing with a national organization such as US Fish and Wildlife, but don't ignore issues and hope they will go away because they won't. They will eventually come back and create an issue. Don't try to hide a crime because the person that you suspect of committing it might be a colleague or a friend. It's really important for the good of the profession and for the good of the institution that we be as legal as we possibly can. Along with that is be ethical, and these are separate because they are separate. Ethical standards are higher than legal standards, so merely being legal does not mean you're being ethical. As museum professionals, we are held to a higher standard of ethical conduct than ordinary people, and that we are ethically bound to report, for instance, suspected crimes and deal with these issues, and Sally Yorkovich will be talking more about this in her upcoming webinar on ethics. Number five is be transparent. If the press calls you or if your members ask, tell them as much as you can about the situation in a neutral, non-accusatory way, particularly if charges will be filed or somebody's going to wind up in court. Don't make a bigger deal out of things than you have to, but don't try to cover things up either. Obviously, you must at times respect privacy and confidentiality, but it's better to be as upfront as you can rather than trying to hide things. Museums or public institutions, the public has a right to know, of course, not all of our business, but most of our business, and for public institutions in general, transparency is a good and very important thing. And the last piece of advice is perhaps the most important. Don't try to be a lawyer or a judge or a jury or a law enforcement officer. Let the professionals do their work and cooperate with them. So I hope none of you wind up in this situation, but it is the kind of thing that any of us can wind up dealing with. I've dealt with some of these myself, and it's very uncomfortable, but in the end, being honest and being transparent and being upfront will resolve the situation faster and better than any other attempt at a solution. Few resources I'd like to mention. There are a lot of good resources that can help you stay legal and keep your museum out of trouble. The two standard textbooks for museum law are a legal primer on managing museum collections, now in its third edition by Marie Malaro and Ildico Pogani d'Angeles. This is a must-have reference for any collections manager. When I'm interviewing people or talking to students, I like to ask them, what are the three reference books you keep with an arm's reach of your desk? And if they're planning to go into registration, they better mention this book as one of those three. The second one is Marilyn Fieland's Museum Law, a guide for officers, directors, and counsel, now in its fourth edition. Laws change, and that's why I mentioned the additions. It is very important to keep up with these and make sure that you do have the current additions. I had an inquiry from a client not long ago on a legal issue, and we were in disagreement and it turned out the client was using the first edition of a legal primer on managing museum collections and the laws had changed and I was referring to the third edition. So keep those up to date, make sure you have the current additions, but those are both extremely useful and very readable books to have on hand. Two others that I recommend are a legal dictionary for museum professionals. It was just published in 2016. This is a really handy, it contains definitions of many terms and it also has chapters that address ethics in the law, copyright, intellectual property, licensing, tax exemption, legal duties of trustees, a variety of things, and these references, by the way, are all on the handout. And another one that I have found useful is the legal guide for museum professionals came out in 2015, edited by Julia Courtney, which has chapters written by a number of lawyers and museum professionals on a variety of issues and I'm not in agreement with all of the conclusions in this, but it is, again, a good source of information. So if you're really interested in legal issues, I think these are four references that are important to have. If you really want to delve further into museum law, then I would encourage you to look into the American Law Institute's Continuing Educational and Workshops on Museum Law. You can watch for announcements. These used to be called Aliyaba, they're now A-L-I-C-L-E, but there will be announcements on Museum Mail and other discussion lists coming up. This is an annual thing that you can attend and bring yourself up to date on museum law. There are, frequently, you will find very readable articles about museum law in the American Alliance of Museums by Monthly Magazine Museum, and a very useful site if you have copyright questions is the Copyright Center at Cornell University. They have a very nice website. I would also encourage you, if you are really interested in these issues, if you find the law intriguing, consider getting a law degree. Museum lawyers are few and far between. There are not many around the country, or if you know students or young people that are looking at the profession and trying to decide what to do, encourage them to get a law degree and specialize in museum law. We could certainly use a lot more people that are trained that understand museums as well as understanding the law. At this point, I think we will open things up to questions if we have some coming in. John, there are a lot of questions here. Okay. I'll make sure that there are no new ones. You can go through them. And I'm going to post the evaluation link. Evaluations are really important, so if you can take a minute after we answer questions to do the evaluation, I'd really appreciate it. So, John. All right. Let me read some of you on it. I don't see the question, so... They're in the parking lot. Oh, I see. So, can you see? Let me see if I can move my screen slightly so I can read this. Worry to find more information. My screen's cut off. Would you mind reading the question? Okay. So, Evelyn Fiedler, who's in New Brunswick, Canada disagreed with how much a non-profit can pay its employees. Government run museums can be non-profits, but they have to adhere to pay bans and union agreements and standard. And the related question is, if an institution is government run, that would fall under the category of public museum, right? Yes. And that's true. What standards they have to adhere to, particularly with unions, is a state by state in general, depending on state law. There are right to work states, for example, that affect that. I'm gonna hand the microphone over to Mike because I'm not very loud. Yeah, there seems to be an audio issue going on with Susan, so I'll step in here. So, John, we've got Anne from Cleveland asking, if an institution is government run, then it would fall under the category of public museums. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. And Linda Best from South Hadley asks, if for-profit museums pay, sorry, let me rephrase that, do for-profit museums pay taxes? Yes, they do. And they would pay the same taxes as any other business, and they would also be able to negotiate tax breaks with a local government as any other business would, but yes, they are subject to the same tax liability as any other business. Okay, great. D. Stubbs Lee from St. John New Brunswick, or sorry, St. John New Brunswick asks, can you comment on major differences between US and Canadian law as it applies to museums? No, I can't because I am not Canadian and I have not looked into Canadian law and I would hesitate to make a mistake there. I know that there are differences, but I am not the person to say that, so I'm afraid I will not be able to help. Okay, fair enough. Robert Franklin from Richland, Washington asks, what if a state university owns collections but it is non-tax exempt? Does that count as non-profit? So the state university would not be tax exempt. Here actually, can you see the presenter chat properly? Let me paste it there. All right, the problem is the other questions are cut off on my screen. Right, but if you can see the context in the, maybe you can read more deeply into the context in the presenter chat. But generally speaking, most state universities are non-profit institutions in the sense that they are government institutions. And so in that sense, yes, that museum would be a non-profit but that actually is a public institution as part of a university. There are private universities, some of which are non-profits, some of which are for profit and a museum at one of those would be whatever the parent institution is unless they had filed a separate paperwork. Great, thank you. Cammie from Buford, Georgia asks, can you tell me where I would find more information about the legal reasons for collections being for the public trust and not assets? That has to do with how the value of collections are reported. There's a nice discussion of that in Corcavilla's book that I mentioned a moment ago, the Legal Dictionary for Museum Professionals. And it has to do with whether those are reported to the Financial Accounting Board every year. It's a little, it's a bit of a complex question but basically if you are a non-profit museum, you do not have to claim your collections as financial assets. Therefore, you are not, those are not considered a financial liability for you but if you begin using those four things other than supporting the collections other than the traditional direct care that can run you into accounting problems. There is no law that says you cannot sell your collections as a non-profit and use that money for any aspect of the museum that you want but it does create some other issues. The point of holding things in the public trust, there are a few lawyers that will argue the public trust is a concept that is not enshrined in law. Somewhat similar to the argument that the separate separation of church and state is not in the constitution but it is recognized as a aspect of constitutional law. So I'm sorry, this is kind of a muddled answer but it's a rather muddled topic but the short answer is that if you do use your collections as financial assets you then are required to report them which complicates your bookkeeping considerably. Okay, thank you. Laura Heamer from Melbourne PA asks if artwork transfers from the artist to a descendant after the artist has died, do the new owners also receive the copyright as well? Not necessarily, in most cases that copyright is extended for 70 years beyond the death of the creator of the artwork and those benefits would then go to the descendants or the named heirs of the artist but the artist might have sold the copyright to that work separately, for example. But in generally speaking, the answer would be yes for 70 years after the death of the artist. They would have, the descendants would have the copyright. Thank you. Jacqueline from Los Angeles asks if the Lacey Act is different from Sight's Law. Yes, it is. It's a completely different law. Sighties is an international agreement and what it does is controls the international trade in a certain flora and fauna species. The Lacey Act is a United States law and it enforces the laws of other countries at the point where international, where wildlife or plant specimens enter the U.S. from and through an international port. And so those, sometimes a violation might fall under both Sighties and Lacey Act that they're completely separate in terms of what they're designed to do and in terms of the legislation. Okay, great, thank you. Helen Ross noted that there was a discrepancy in the dates a reference to the Hague Convention in the handout indicates 1954, while the slide indicates 1945. Can you clarify which is correct? I believe the slide is in error, it should be 1954. There was just a transposition of numbers. Great, thank you. And Edward Van Scooter from Carlsbad asks if it could fair, sorry, let me just start again. Could fair use be argued for using art for advertising purposes for a nonprofit museum? It depends on how the advertising is done. If you are using an image of a copyrighted object within your museum to advertise an upcoming show, most people would say that was fair use, but if you produce a brochure and distribute it around town, most people would say that was not fair use. But that's, as I say, most people that is not clearly defined in the law. And what the, for instance, the Association of Art Museum Directors has recommended that you don't use images like that on brochures that are widely distributed, but you could use, for example, thumbnails of copyrighted art on your website if you had your collection listed, but not larger images that could be reproducible. The trick is to avoid anything that might be interpreted as commercial use. Distributing a brochure about the city to attract people to your museum could be interpreted as a commercial use because you're trying to recruit visitors into the museum with that image. But it is very, very fuzzy on part of the law. Okay, thank you. Julia Merkel mentions that they've been asked by an artist recently to destroy a piece that was defective and the artist sent a replacement was destroying the correct decision and further, it could have been useful in a teaching collection, but we followed her wishes. Well, legally under Vara, the artist has the right to say, whether it was the right decision or not is a different issue. Legally, obeying the artist's wishes was the right thing to do. In that situation, what I would do is try to sit down with the artist and discuss other options with them and make a case for doing something like using it in an educational situation. Artists are very funny about their work. There are artists who, when they finish a work, they never want to deal with it again. They want whatever happens to it to happen to it. If it decays or degrades in use or in storage, that's fine. There are other artists who will happily come in and replace works or will work to keep their art looking the way they intended it to look originally. So you'd want to work with the artist. But in terms of, if assuming this is a piece that fell under the qualifications for Vara, then obeying the artist is the right thing to do. Thank you very much. And Hilary Sullivan from Kentucky writes, our museum exists as a result of a city charter. The city CFO today told me that he thinks we are a 115. Can you explain what that is and what the implications of that classification are? I do not know what the 115 means. That could be a city statute or state law. I'm unfamiliar with that. But it is an important thing to find out, particularly if you are a city museum, what your classification is, and more importantly, who owns your collection. We didn't get into this, but there are museums that administer collections, but do not own them. The example in the news most recently was Detroit Art Museum, which at the time the city of Detroit declared bankruptcy, it turned out that although the art museum had separated from the city back in the 50s and was an independent organization, the art collection still belonged to the city of Detroit. And a lot of the creditors wanted the art collection sold in order to pay off bonds that the city owned. And it wound up taking an intervention of some other nonprofits and donation of, I believe, was $800 million to the city for pension funds in order for the art that the museum had exhibited all these years to be legally transferred so that the museum was the owner. So you could be in a situation of being in a museum with a collection and thinking you own it when in fact you do not. OK, thank you. Amy in Indianapolis asks if scans or photos of objects in a collection can be reproduced as graphics in an exhibit. If you have the right to make reproductions of the objects, they can. In an exhibit, most people would agree that that qualifies as fair use. So you should be fine on that. The issue would be if those images that you used for the exhibit were distributed in any other way. For instance, if you put the exhibit online, you might be running into fair use problems in. If they were used strictly in the exhibit, you're fine. OK, thank you. Melvin from New Mexico asks what can Native American Indian tribes do to stop cultural items from being auctioned internationally? Well, one thing they could do is encourage their legislatures to pass unidroits so that that protects American cultural property as well. Currently, there are no international laws that protect Native American objects that are taken out of the country from being sold. And that's a tragedy, but that's the situation. And we actually need legislation to provide those protections. There are limitations, of course, in almost any protection. NAGPRA itself is limited to museums that receive federal funding. So if a private museum owns objects that might otherwise fall under NAGPRA, legally they can still keep those objects. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done with strengthening laws and creating new laws. Thank you very much. Natalie from Baton Rouge asks, where can I find more information about legal issues related to found in collection items? One good place to start is the Collection Conundrums Book by Rebecca Buck and Jean Gilmore. You could also look in the latest edition of Museum Registration Methods. And there is some discussion of these issues in Malaro and De Angelis' legal primer as well. The issue there has to do with when you find something in the collection, establishing whether or not your museum does or does not own it. Because only when that is established can you then either take possession of it or legally get rid of it. OK, great. Thank you. There is another question from Alicia in Richmond. It's currently in the questions box on the left of your screen. It's a little lengthy. I think you may want to read it. All right. Let me take a look here. OK, this is about deaccessioning and transferring human remains that are not antiquities, not NAGPA related, more like medical specimens, since these remains could still be considered historic. They would not fall under the category of recently deceased or in bomb remains. How can museums go about deaccessioning? If there are no restrictions on these, they can simply be deaccessioned. You could work with a funeral home, for example, to have these remains buried or cremated. You might look for another institution like a medical museum. It would like to take them in, depending on what you personally feel should happen with the remains. I know some people do not think it's appropriate for museums to have human remains. And so you would want to think through that issue. But since they aren't covered by any laws, you could pretty well do what you would like with them that was treated in a respectful manner. OK, great. Thank you. Kimberly from Oklahoma asks, if there's no documentation for found in collection images, what should be the first steps to take with the images? No documentation for the objects, I presume that means. At that point, you want to look at, see if your state has a found in collections law. Some states do. Some do not. There is a website, I believe, that lists those. There was a list in the most recent issue of museum registration methods, but that came out in 2010. So it might be a little dated. But you need to find out what your state law says. If your state law, your state does not have a found in collections law, you can then work with state common law. And in most cases, the old line about possession being 9 cents of the law is pretty much accurate. If you have those, if no claimant, you should advertise. If no claimant comes forward, you can then claim those objects yourself and resolve it in that way. But it's going to depend on the state you live in. Super, thank you. Yes, and Karen from Norma in Oklahoma responded to that, that Oklahoma doesn't have a found collections law, or found in collections law that deals with it. But yes, so people are. At that point, you might need to consult a lawyer and ask how the state would handle it under state common law. If you do that, I would take to the lawyer a list of other states found in collection type laws. So because this is an area of law not familiar to most lawyers and give them a chance to take a look at that and give you advice. Do we have other questions? We have multiple attendees typing currently. OK, while they're doing that, let me just remind everyone of the next two upcoming webinars, the ethical issues and collections management, and why do we have this, the insight on hindsight and the accessioning decisions. And I'd also like to mention for those of you who are attending the AAM meeting coming up in St. Louis on Sunday, May 7th, at 1 PM, there will be a panel discussion led by Darlene Bialowski called You Ask Legal Experts Answer. The panel will have a lawyer, a provenance researcher, and a fine arts insurance representative there. And it will be set up kind of talk show format so that it is in design for your questions. So any of you with more detailed questions, that would be a session you would definitely want to attend at AAM. Great, thank you. We do have another question from Hillary. What documentation is required for artifacts that were purchased at flea markets or tag sales with no receipts? And that, again, falls under the more or less similar to the found in collections. If you have no means of documentation, what I would do is have the person who made the purchase write out a statement dated and sign it stating where they obtained the object. The catch on something like that is you have acquired that object at the flea market in good faith. As far as you know, the transaction was legal. You don't know if the object was stolen before it got to the flea market. So a little provenance research might be in order. If you think that this object is something of high value, you would be worth your while to make an attempt, as you would, with any other provenance research to find out if it was a stolen object or not. Beyond that, you do what you can using the information that you have on hand, which, of course, is very little to establish ownership. Great, thanks. So I see there's another question here about owned by your museum. Do you mean owned by your parent organization? That all depends on who owns your collection, as I mentioned before, not all museums own their own collections. And that has to do with how the museum is set up. If your museum, for instance, is organized as an association, the association cannot own property. If it's a nonprofit corporation, the corporation can. I have heard of museums where they had a foundation that actually owned the collection that it was administered by the museum. Those situations vary widely. You need to look into the legal organization of the institution that you're working in. Right, there's also a subsequent question beneath or another question, I should say, from Danielle in Portland with regards to a public art program. I am not seeing that question. Oh, OK, let me read that for you. Oh, I see it. There it is. I work for a public art program. And we have no central location. Our artwork is spread across the city, but it sounds like we still fit the definition of a museum. Is this true? Well, it depends on the definition you want to use, Danielle. If you use the IMLS definition, then you probably do, because that definition says owns or utilizes. And the catch with their definition is you have to exhibit the exhibit work. And it sounds like you are doing that, so you would probably meet their definition. The problem with the IMLS definition is that, for instance, a collection at a university used for research does not qualify as a museum. The best example I can give you of that is the vertebrate paleontology collection at University of California, Berkeley, which is very well known among any small child who likes dinosaurs because they have a nice website. And they exist physically with a large collection, but there are no public exhibits in their building. They are not qualified to apply for IMLS money, even though they maintain a large collection and a website and do all of the other things a museum does, but a gallery that does not own collections but exhibits objects would qualify as a museum. So it does sound like you probably would. I would sit down with that definition and go over it part by part and make sure. Great. Thank you very much. We've got a few more people typing here, and so we don't have any questions in the queue. We'll just hold on while they come in. But I do have a reminder in addition to the upcoming webinars that you mentioned. I've been asked to let everyone know that there will be a webinar on ivory over the course of the summer. And so stay tuned for that webinar to be scheduled. And a lot of you may find that to be very interesting as well based on today's topic and the upcoming webinar topics. As well, reminder of course, the evaluation link up at the top left of your screen. Just go ahead and click on the evaluation link, April 12. And then you can click the Browse 2 button to open that up, please. Todd asks, do items held in trust have higher legal standing than collections on loan? No, they're still owned by someone. And as the borrower, if you have them on loan at your museum, as the borrower, you are legally required to do due diligence and taking care of those objects. So you would put the same level of care, provide the same level of care and security for those objects as you would for the things in your collection. And that is the nature of a loan. It's the nature of a bailment contract, which is what a loan is. So whether they're owned or owned by you would not make a difference. Great, thank you very much. Maria Isabel asks a simple and short question about recommended resources. Are those the latest editions? Of the sources I listed, those are. The latest editions. Fantastic. But do keep an eye on the market, because new editions appear all the time. OK, and Amanda asks, can a museum borrow an artifact containing eagle feathers from a federally recognized Native American tribe member? The short answer to that is not without a permit from SIDES, because eagles are a protected species. You'll need to look them up and see which index they are the last time I dealt with this issue. They were a SIDES one listed species. I think they still are. And you would have to have a special permit to borrow those. The Native American as an individual would have a legal right to own them. You as a non-Native American would not have a legal right to have them in your possession even on loan without a permit. Great, thank you very much. And some people are jumping into the conversation here. So we are sort of out of questions at this point. So we'll ask a final call for questions if anybody has anything else. Otherwise, we will go ahead and wrap up for today. A few more people are typing. Michelle asks, how do you review a deed of gift statement slash agreement? I use the criteria for deed of gift that are in the Milarro and DeAngeles book. They have some example forms. And they discuss in some detail exactly what information should be included. Your museum should have its own deed of gift form that it uses. And you simply make sure whether that information is filled out correctly or not. If any of the information seems suspect, I would ask for clarification. Great, thank you. Lana asks, in relation to NAGPRA, what does Receives Government Funding mean? And grants included in that? That does mean exactly that if you receive any federal government funding, including a federal grant, which would be, for instance, from IMLS, that would be federal government funding. Thank you. OK, a few more people are typing. OK, Kate asks, what are your legal obligations if a family member of a long ago donor disputes that donor's right to have given the object to your museum? Now, this is a fairly common thing that comes up. If you have the object in your museum, and if it is your understanding that it was a free and clear donation, the onus is on the family member to make the contrary claim. So the first thing you should do is check your records. And with any luck, you will be able to find some kind of donation documentation. If you do not have that, which is pretty common, to not have any documentation for something that occurred years ago, the family member to make the claim will have to produce some sort of evidence that the loan was the gift was not intended to be a gift. For instance, a signed statement by their deceased relative that they had loaned this to the museum, not given it to them. It is a very difficult thing to prove, but in this case, if it's something that's been in your museum for a long time, understood to have been a donation, they must prove that it was not a donation if you already have it in your possession. Now, this can lead to issues, particularly if you're a small museum with a local community that may get feelings of resentment. But I've seen this fairly commonly. Someone sees an object donated by a parent or grand parent and wants it back and goes to the museum with this claim, but they must prove that it was not intended to be a gift. It is not your obligation to prove that it was. It's theirs to prove that it wasn't. Great, thank you very much. Hillary Sullivan asks what the legal difference is between found on site versus abandoned property. She has a typewriter placed on a loading dock, and they cannot ask her to take it. And we will not accession it or use it for education. Do I need to document disposal? If there is no evidence that this typewriter is owned by your institution, or you have no other evidence of the owner, no, you don't. That's just abandoned property, and you would follow your state's abandoned property law if they have one. And but you should be able to just get rid of it. Great, thank you very much. Unless you suspect for some reason that it is something other than abandoned property. Robert Franklin asks, if you know of a local historical society museum with native indigenous artifacts who have resisted informing tribes for NAGPRA, is there a way to report them? Yes, you can report them through the NAGPRA website to the federal government. You do want to make sure that, in fact, these are NAGPRA materials, and that the museum, in fact, does fall under NAGPRA. But if you go to the NAGPRA website, there is a means there to report things. Before I reported them, you might want to approach the museum and possibly that they are unaware of this responsibility, and that might be a little nicer way to handle it if that can be done, is to talk to the people at the museum first and suggest that they look into NAGPRA. Peggy asks, do museums need a permit to have eagle feathers in their collections from Native American artifacts if the items are not being displayed? Whether they're displayed or not is relevant. And you would need to have permission to possess those unless you can prove that you have had them prior to pre-act. And I'm not sure when the Bald Eagle Protection Act went in. You would need to check that. You can check that on the Fish and Wildlife website. OK. And Lisa asks on the topic of eagles, what about displaying taxidermied eagles? It's the same thing they have feathers. They're still a specimen. OK. Hillary. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was going to say with something like a taxidermied eagle, if you can demonstrate when it was prepared, it might qualify as pre-act, meaning that it came into possession before it was the law of its past. So it would be grandfathered in? Possibly. OK. Hillary Sullivan asks, what kind of items would qualify as proof for individuals disputing museum ownership? That would pretty much be up to whoever was making the judicial ruling, either an agreement that you could come to with that person or if it goes to court, then it would be a judge. But it all depends on, I cannot tell you specifically what, for instance, what documentation, but it could be something, anything that can prove that the object was intended to be a loan, not a gift. And that is almost always going to be written documentation. OK. Thank you very much. I see we're getting a lot of comments about eagle feathers. The advice of contacting your local US sufficient wildlife service is very good. And they are very good about walking you through the processes that person says. Super. Thank you very much. Yes, we are out of questions. And we're nearing the bottom of the hour. We only have four minutes left. So Suzanne was very grateful for your voice quality. And I'm grateful to Suzanne for giving me the headset I'm using. So I also want to say a big thanks to you, Mike, and to Susan for all your help in putting the webinar on. I really appreciate it. No problem. Thank you very much. And again, just a reminder of the upcoming webinars that are on your screen, as John mentioned. So next week with Sal Yerkovich and May 17th, so next month with Leslie Jones. And again, not to harp on it, but don't forget about the evaluation link, please. It's very, very helpful for the FAIC to develop their programming. And so they value your input. And also, again, this summer, we will have a webinar on ivory. And so that will be of interest to you, I'm sure. So keep your eyes peeled for notification about that. So thank you, John, for your webinar. And thank you, everybody, for joining us. And we will adjourn our session today. Thank you. All right, thank you.