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