A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections

Hailed when it was first published in 1985 as the bible of U.S. collections management, A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections offers the only comprehensive discussion of the legal questions faced by museums regarding collections. This revised and expanded third edition addresses the many legal developments--including a comprehensive discussion of stolen art and the international movement of cultural property, recent developments in copyright, and the effects of burgeoning electronic uses--that have occurred during the past twenty-five years. An authorative, go-to book for any museum professional, Legal Primer offers detailed explanations of the law, suggestions for preventing legal problems, and numerous case studies of lawsuits involving museum collections.

Marie C. Malaro is an attorney who has devoted most of her career to advising and educating the museum community. She served as a legal advisor to the Smithsonian Institution for many years and then accepted a professorship at the George Washington University where she served a s Director of the university’s Graduate Program in Museum Studies. She now holds the position of Professor Emeritus at that university and continues to teach occasionally. She has lectured extensively in this country and abroad on museum related -topics and has contributed to numerous other museum publications. She is also the author of Museum Governance: Law, Ethics and Policy (Smithsonian Institution Press 1994).

Ildiko Pogany DeAngelis holds BA and MA degrees in art history and a Certificate in Art Museum Administration from the Smithsonian Institution. After working in museums in the field of collection management, she earned a law degree magna cum laude from the American University’s Washington College of Law in 1980. For the majority of her legal career, she served as a member of the Smithsonian Institution’s in-house legal staff concentrating on collections-related legal issues. In 1998, she left the Smithsonian to direct the Graduate Museum Studies Program at George Washington University for a decade. She now holds the title of Associate Professor Emerita and continues to teach a course on law and ethics in a distance education program that she developed with grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This online graduate program is designed to train staff charged with collections care in museums around the country. She has published numerous articles and has also served as faculty and member of the steering committee for the annual American Law Institute/American Bar Association-sponsored seminar, Legal Issues in Museum Administration.