Annie Oakley's Parker

[Dean Romig]

I'd like to understand the terms of a gift or endowment to this museum...(?). Do they actually have the legal right to go trading away historical Guns and artifacts endowed to them. What about the obligations of the curators and BOD of the museum. I suspect such a museum's charter must speak to the obligations of these people, especially if it is a 501 C not for profit, educational institution.

Incidentally, what is "the" Colt Collection? Who's Colt collection? Which of the many fabulous Colt collections in private ownership?




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[Bill Murphy]

Get yourself appointed to the board of any museum or collector organization and you can participate in the deaccessioning of any item in their collections. The safest way to prevent abuse of this system is to make a larger number of people responsible, with voting rights on the liquidation of collections or individual items.

[M Vollinger]

[QUOTE=Dean Romig;197218]I'd like to understand the terms of a gift or endowment to this museum...(?). Do they actually have the legal right to go trading away historical Guns and artifacts endowed to them. What about the obligations of the curators and BOD of the museum. I suspect such a museum's charter must speak to the obligations of these people, especially if it is a 501 C not for profit, educational institution.

Incidentally, what is "the" Colt Collection? Who's Colt collection? Which of the many fabulous Colt collections in private ownership?


Dean:
Colt Firearms sold the collection circa 1957 to the CT State Library. It was under their curator ship that these unfortunate lapses in ethics for greed resulted in the loss of critical pieces of history.

I spoke to a curator at the Autry four years ago, and at that time his attitude was pretty blase in terms of the collection and any parameters; display, historical education and or preservation.
The teachers for school groups often discourage kids from spending time with all those "bad guns", rather than education on part of history...
It is anyone's guess as to how the collection has been "managed" since to prevent more "disappearance" of items. You just don't see much of the collection on display, all on shelves.