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  • 1.  Museum/Municipal agreements

    Posted 07-17-2025 09:25 AM
    Greetings, Hive mind!  Is anyone out there willing to share a lease, MOU or MOA between their museum and municipality?  I am assisting the Ledyard Historical Society with its relationship (as a steward of collections, mainly) with the Town of Ledyard (which owns and maintains the 18th c. Nathan Lester House Museum).

    Thank you!  Vivian


  • 2.  RE: Museum/Municipal agreements

    Posted 07-18-2025 10:54 AM
    Edited by Jennifer Van Haaften 07-18-2025 10:54 AM

    Hi Vivian,

    I used to work in the Chicago suburbs, twenty years ago now, but the Chicago suburbs have a lot of historical society and municipality agreements that go way back. I know for a fact that the Lombard Historical Society has an agreement with the Village of Lombard, where the society owns the collections and the village owns the buildings and grounds. Definitely reach out to them. West Chicago History Museum and the Warrenville Historical Society have municipal/society partnerships. Sara Phalen is the director/curator for both of those organizations. She may also be able to connect you with other Chicago suburb history organizations that match what you're looking for.



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    Jennifer Van Haaften
    Assistant Director
    Wisconsin Veterans Museum
    Madison WI
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    Original Message


  • 3.  RE: Museum/Municipal agreements

    Posted 07-18-2025 12:14 PM

    Thank you!



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    Vivian Zoe PhD
    Executive Director, retired
    Gales Ferry CT
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    Original Message


  • 4.  RE: Museum/Municipal agreements

    Posted 07-18-2025 11:27 AM
      |   view attached

    Hello, Vivian, 

    I work for the City of Harlem, Georgia. The city owns and operates the Harlem Museum and Welcome Center, the Home of the Laurel & Hardy Museum of Georgia. The museum is operated by city staff, myself included, and we do not have an MOU with the city. We do have an advisory board, but the city council is considered our BOD. I do have a Collections Management Policy I can share, but that agreement is only between the museum staff and the advisory board, not city council. 

    I attached my version of our policy that was updated in 2022. This is not approved by the city, but we are following it to the best of our ability so as to not get the city into any legal problems. The city also approved our oral history agreement document, so we can now collect oral history interviews!

    I admit that it has been hard explaining to other city staff, including my manager, how museums work and maintain their collections, but they have been willing to learn - we just have a few disagreements. My background is in public history and I have some archiving experience through a GRA I had with an archivist at Georgia State University. I reach out to colleagues and other members of my professional network for advice, too. 



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    Meghan Foster
    Museum & Visitor Center Director and City Events Coordinator (Head of Tourism and Events)
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    Attachment(s)

    pdf
    Collections Management Policy.Updated 2022.pdf   240 KB 1 version
    Original Message


  • 5.  RE: Museum/Municipal agreements

    Posted 07-18-2025 12:13 PM

    Thank you!



    ------------------------------
    Vivian Zoe PhD
    Executive Director, retired
    Gales Ferry CT
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    Original Message


  • 6.  RE: Museum/Municipal agreements

    Posted 07-18-2025 03:15 PM
      |   view attached
    Dear Ms. Zoe & other colleagues:

    I led The Sam Waller Museum, a municipally-owned & operated museum in The Pas, Manitoba, Canada, 1983-1995.  The museum's web site is found at 

    https://www.samwallermuseum.ca/ .


    While employed there, I drafted a governing document & guided it through the Town Council approval process creating the first Town of The Pas by-law to formalise the museum's governing document. 

    I attach it FYI.

    This Museum continues today as a municipal museum, but, of course, the by-law might possibly have been revised since I left thirty (30) years ago.

    From its web site at https://www.samwallermuseum.ca/ , the current e-mail contact for The Sam Waller Museum is 

    samwallermuseum@mts.net .



     All best wishes for the success of your search for information.

    Respectfully yours

    Paul C. Thistle

    Solving Task Saturation for Museum Workers ~ Help for fully loaded camels working in a rain of straws blog https://solvetasksaturation.wordpress.com/
     
    Critical Museology Miscellanea ~ blog for critical, self-reflexive, & radical re-examination of museum practice https://miscellaneousmuseology.wordpress.com/ 

    Indian-European Trade Relations in the Lower Saskatchewan River Region to 1840, national, provincial, & academic award-winning book with blog at  https://indianeuropeantraderelations.wordpress.com/

    For the record, Paul C. Thistle is a descendant of white settlers in southwestern Ontario, Canada that is located in the traditional territory of ‎the Attiwonderonk (Neutral), Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ, and Haudenosaunee peoples (www.native-land.ca/ ). 

    I am tremendously blessed to have been raised and retired here due to the generosity of Indigenous peoples who share their homelands with me. I believe that a reconcili-action response from white settlers in Canada remains pathetically long overdue. 

    More than 'acknowledgement' is required. I personally am engaged in advocating for museums to attend to Indigenous concerns about how heritage organisations address the difficulties identified in the Moved to Action report of the Canadian Museums Association (2023) rb.gy/gd2qfp .



    Attachment(s)

    pdf
    Town of The Pas Museum Bylaw 1991.pdf   4.62 MB 1 version
    Original Message


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