Crime in Ann Arbor

The AP's Jeff Karoub relates* the treatment treasures get at an ethical collections department when its development pros can't quite make the case for an operating endowment:

"In the 1970s, the [Stearns musical instrument] collection – much at that point relegated to cabinets – was cleared out of the auditorium and shipped to an unheated barn far from the central campus. There, hundreds of instruments were lost, stolen or destroyed, according to records [Steven Ball, director of the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments] has reviewed."

Of course, the investment pros could make the case easily, quickly raising the millions in operating endowment that the collection's proper treatment would take... but that would be eeeeevilllll!!! Losing hundreds of irreplaceable instruments to neglect is a lesser crime compared to greater crime of using the financial endowment that each instrument comes with in order to care for it properly.

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1207543.html

What's with all of the spam posts on the board lately?

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Originally Posted by noise

What's with all of the spam posts on the board lately?

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I'm not sure why the original post would be considered spam. Was there a deleted post that I may have missed?



As for the original post, if UofM accepted the donated collection they have a responsibility to take care of it properly. It's even more egregious if the collection came along with a sizeable endowment to cover the costs of their care.

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Originally Posted by Johnnny5

I'm not sure why the original post would be considered spam. Was there a deleted post that I may have missed?

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My apologies, Johnny5, for not referencing the context:

http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?2354-In-Detroit-bankruptcy-what-will-happen-to-DIA

That thread explores Detroit's ownership of the DIA collection and, in its revival, what those many, many billions of dollars in assets mean for Detroit's financial situation. I argue Detroit should mobilize those billions to create an endowment funding the arts, sciences, humanities and essential services, especially since at least one tool, my own Coaccession, lets it do so without impairing its cultural control over its DIA collection. Others argue that my creative approach to Detroit's DIA assets make me a bad person, to wit, a spammer. The original post in this thread shows what often happens when institutions don't mobilize the financial value of their cultural property, replying to those others in an effort to show that my creativity is perhaps not so bad. I should have provided context in that original post.

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Originally Posted by Johnnny5

As for the original post, if UofM accepted the donated collection they have a responsibility to take care of it properly. It's even more egregious if the collection came along with a sizeable endowment to cover the costs of their care.

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There's a difference between responsibility and capacity, and some museum people are beginning to argue that museums should refuse cultural property donations unless the donor also includes a cash operating endowment to care for the donated objects. That posture, of course, would end up leaving a lot of cultural property out in the cold. So, museums accept artworks, musical instruments, historical documents and whatnot and hope that something will turn up via their development departments [[i.e., fundraisers). When it doesn't, as frequently happens, they neglect the objects and keep hoping. That's harsh, I know, but it pretty well describes UM and the Stearn Collection.

I offer an alternative that mobilizes the financial value of the collection objects, so that the $25million+ value of the Stearn Collection can earn capital income for UM that can pay for exhibition, research and conservation rather than earning unrealized capital appreciation that can't pay for anything. With my Coaccession tool, musical instrument collectors get capital appreciation by buying a right to store a Stearn Collection instrument and UM gets capital income by investing the purchase price of the storage right. The collector keeps the instrument when it's not on exhibit or in use for research, conservation or any other UM purpose. UM's cultural rights run with the instrument, so the collector can sell the storage right and realize any capital appreciation while still leaving UM with cultural control over the instrument in the next collector's hands. Thus I say that each instrument, each artwork, each document does come with its own cash endowment for cultural purposes. UM just has to mobilize that endowment. Other endowment mobilization tools exist, but don't offer the unimpaired cultural guarantees of my Coaccession tool.

UM can stand pat, hoping its development pros can attract gifts to create an operating endowment, or it can offer Stearn Collection musical instruments as a very-socially-responsible store of value, raising an endowment by letting collectors invest in the collection. The latter approach is certainly novel, but I think it's worth trying given the frequent failures of the former approach. The scale of Detroit's DIA collection -- many, many billions of dollars -- would let it offer a wider range of socially-responsible investments, but the principle is the same: Detroit trades the capital appreciation it already gets but can't use for hundreds of millions of dollars in capital income it needs to pay for essential services and should want to fund the arts, sciences and humanities.

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Originally Posted by Johnnny5

I'm not sure why the original post would be considered spam. Was there a deleted post that I may have missed?

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I think you can check past posting history, but I wouldn't recommend it. There's a one-trick pony trying to sell a hair-brained idea.

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Originally Posted by noise

I think you can check past posting history, but I wouldn't recommend it. There's a one-trick pony trying to sell a hair-brained idea.

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Yeah, there's no need to read about ethical collections departments that magically and mysteriously remove an artwork's capacity to store value. Stick with this thread, where we deal with realities like valuable musical instruments.

And noise, only the hare-brained call an idea hair-brained more than once, so use this opportunity.