Open Forum

Hello,

I encountered a similar issue when working for a municipal museum organization in terms of what to do with the official gifts received by the mayor. The quantity was huge, and the quality was ... well ... mixed. Almost none of it had any enduring interest. So, I recommended that the city museum organization, at the end of the mayor's term, take a few representative examples that had some cultural significance, but not the rest. I also recommended that the rest, at the end of the mayor's term, be auctioned off at a charity event and that the proceeds go to a charity or charities of interest to the mayor. In the end, I did take some of the better things in terms of meaning for the museum collection (six or eight items), but the rest (several hundred) went into storage in some municipal warehouse, where, I believe it continues to rot away pointlessly. Surely the auction would have been a better fate. (It would have been completely nuts for the museum organization to take it all, given the lack of meaning associated with most of the assemblage, and the resources it would have consumed in terms of cataloguing, storage, and all the other stuff associated with managing collections.

(The mayor's papers, of course, went to the municipal archives, but they had historical value, and the provincial laws regarding municipalities required such a deposit to be made, but our municipality has separate museum and archival institutions run by different departments. In discussions with people, I found that the non-cultural-sector individuals seemed to think both the papers and the 'stuff' had equal value, and so providing some insight proved to be necessary.)

I hope this helps.

Cheers,

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Carl Benn PhD
Professor
Ryerson University
Toronto ON
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2018 07:24 AM
From: Marsha MacDowell
Subject: Collection policies re. official gifts to university administrators?

I have been tasked with drafting a collection policy and procedures governing official gifts to our university officials. Does anyone have a university policy or set of procedures they could share with me?

Thank you so much,

Marsha

Marsha MacDowell, Ph.D.
Curator and Professor
Michigan State University Museum
409. W. Circle Drive
East Lansing, MI 48824-1045
macdowel@msu.edu

Hi Marsha:

While I'm not part of a university museum, we have a similar situation in regard to gifts given to the governor of North Dakota. We don't have any official policies specific for this situation, but I thought I'd share my experiences. A new governor was elected in 2016 and we had a transition to a new administration.  They contacted us about items from the governor's time in office that they thought we might want.  Most of it was things like gifts from trade delegations, t-shirts/souvenirs from events that he and his wife had been a part of, flags given to him by military units, art from constituents, etc. We took it all through our typical collections committee process like it was a normal donation proposal.  To prep the proposal, a group of us went to the governor's office and to the residence and spoke with staff about what each item was, then took photos for the committee.  As mentioned in the previous reply, the quality of the items varied a bit and there was some repetition, so we only accepted a portion of what was offered.  With that in mind if there was an official policy for this, I would definitely want it to state we had a say over what we accepted or didn't, rather than it being a blanket, "we take everything from the governor" sort of thing.

Apparently most administrations contact us of their own accord but to my knowledge, there isn't anything that says they have to do that.  It's up to the discretion of the governor.  That would be the one thing I would want to change.  Not that it would need to be state law or anything but just having an official policy that the governor's office will contact us during the transition period.  I think it's important in our case for us to document each administration in one form or another.

Thanks,

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Geoffrey Woodcox
Assistant Curator of Collections
State Historical Society of North Dakota
Bismarck ND
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2018 07:24 AM
From: Marsha MacDowell
Subject: Collection policies re. official gifts to university administrators?

I have been tasked with drafting a collection policy and procedures governing official gifts to our university officials. Does anyone have a university policy or set of procedures they could share with me?

Thank you so much,

Marsha

Marsha MacDowell, Ph.D.
Curator and Professor
Michigan State University Museum
409. W. Circle Drive
East Lansing, MI 48824-1045
macdowel@msu.edu