> On Aug 29, 2024, at 9:44 AM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 8/29/2024 8:11 AM, cz via cctalk wrote:
>>> Unfortunately, museums are no longer a safe place for donated and rare
>>> artifacts. Paul Allen's heirs just want to keep their $17 billion for
>>> themselves.
>> Never have been. If there is one thing in life I have learned it's that the
>> purpose of a museum is not to preserve history.
>> The purpose of a museum is to destroy history.
>
> And let's not forget libraries. I donated a book (Theological
> Subject, another of my degree concentrations not computer related)
> to the University library where I worked. It lasted about 5 years before it
> was no longer on the shelf or in the card catalog.
Indeed, the risk with these organizations isn't merely outside pillagers, but
inside jobs. If you donate something, the museum will do with it what they
want, including throwing it away if they feel like it. And if you have
contractual restrictions in place, it's anyone's guess whether any court will
enforce those. Precedent (in the USA at least) suggests that courts can be
swayed by snow jobs from museums to set aside the plain English wording of
donor terms.
A loan is a whole lot safer, though even then you have to worry about damage to
the item. I know of a case where a classic computer was lent to a museum and
came back after the museum canceled the loan, with one of its core modules
missing. By curious coincidence, a core module exactly like that one appeared
as a separate item "from an anonymous donor" in the museum's collection around
that time.
paul
