If you're considering lending items from you collection to be displayed in a museum exhibit, it is important to familiarize yourself with the issues museums face when borrowing items from private collections.

Museums frequently borrow pieces from private collections. This practice is essential to keeping museum exhibits fresh and helping to draw the public into the museum. However, borrowing items from public collections can cause problems for museums.

The controversial "Sensations" exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which featured a number of fine art pieces borrowed from private collections, caused an uproar within the New York community that threatened the museum's government funding. The focus of the controversy and heated debate on free speech was a painting of the Virgin Mary smeared with elephant dung and encircled by pornographic magazine cutouts. The "Sensation" exhibition and the federal hearings that ensued raised not only controversy as respects its content matter, but also involvement of lenders and financial backers in curatorial decisions.

Following the controversial exhibition, the American Association of Museums adopted new ethical guidelines for exhibiting borrowed objects. The Association adopted these guidelines during at an association board meeting and distributed them to its 3,000 museum members and 11,400 museum professionals and trustees. The American Association of Museums is hopeful that the guidelines will offer museums (especially smaller museums with less power than the Brooklyn Museum of Art) guidance on the development of institutional policies and standards for exhibiting borrowed objects.

As a potential lender or contributor to a museum exhibition, the staff at www.chubbcollectors.com thought you would find the guidelines helpful in understanding of a museum's policies for borrowing items as well as understanding what's expected from you as a lender. Below is a copy of the American Association of Museums' "Guidelines on Exhibiting Borrowed Objects."

Guidelines on Exhibiting Borrowed Objects

Before considering exhibiting borrowed objects, a museum should have in place a written policy, approved by its governing authority and publicly accessible on request, that addresses these issues:

1. Borrowing Objects

The policy will contain provisions:

A. Ensuring that the museum determines that there is a clear connection between the exhibition of the objects(s) and the museum’s mission, and that the inclusion of the objects(s) is consistent with the intellectual integrity of the exhibition

B. Requiring the museum to examine the lender’s relationship to the institution to determine if there are potential conflicts of interest, or an appearance a conflict, such as in cases where the lender has a formal or informal connection to museum decision-making (for example, as a board member, staff or donor).

C. Including guidelines and procedures to address such conflicts or the appearance of conflicts or influence. Such guidelines and procedures may require withdrawal from the decision-making process of those with a real or information connection to the museum decision-making( for example, as aboard member, staff member or donor)

D. Prohibiting the museum from accepting any commission or fee from the sale of objects borrowed for exhibition. This prohibition does not apply to displays of objects explicitly organized for the sale of those objects, for example, craft shows.

2. Lender Involvement

The policy should assure that the museum will maintain intellectual integrity and institutional control over the exhibition. In following its policy, the museum:

A. Should retain full decision-making authority over the content and presentation of the exhibition.

B. May, while retaining the full decision-making authority, consult with a potential lender on objects to be selected from the lender’s collection and the significance to be given to those objects in the exhibition.

C. Should make public the source eof funding where the lender is also a funder of the exhibition. If a museum receives a request for anonymity, the museum should avoid such anonymity where it would conceal a conflict of interest (real or perceived) or raise other ethical issues.