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SUPREME
COURT
Decision
on the
Denney Case
21 May 1999
News
update |
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Lessons from the Denney Collection
: 13
Conclusions
Improvement in security of loan collections
required - Universal register of loans on the WWW suggested.
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The Denney case indicates that, concerning the security of loan collections,
there could be much improvement.
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Some improvement must lie in preventing the use of mechanisms of acquisition
that use "self improving titles".
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Other improvement must lie in providing a quality system that not only
monitors loans and acquisitions but has powers of corrective action to
ensure that the rules are followed both to the letter and in spirit.
Cases like Denney undermine the basis of confidence and trust on which
museums are built. They destroy the confidence between lender and borrower
and between one museum and another Who would want to lend to a museum if
they thought that by so doing their collection might be lost to their heirs?
I believe that it is in the interests of us all to give the matter of
the security of loan collections our closest attention and that Museums
should re-examine their acquisition policies so as to avoid becoming entangled
in inheritance disputes in the future.
Above all, there needs to be an international forum for setting standards
and dealing with loans problems that is accessible to all stakeholders:
Museums, lenders, their potential heirs and legatees, private or public.
I hope that this presentation of the Denney Case will stimulate discussion
and prevent museums being misled and the rights of private citizens being
infringed by some even more outrageous happening in the future. Who knows,
it might one day lead to a universal register of loans on the World Wide
Web.
Paper presented for discussion
at the Institute of Art and Law Seminar on Art
Loans and Exhibitions, at the Courtauld Institute, London, May 13 1996
Web Pages and text © A.F.Anderson
1996, 1997, 1999
Version 2.2 May 23 1999
antonya@antonya.ace.co.uk
Section 12 - Index -
Appendix 