Diploma in Law and Collections Management (Dip LCM)

A NEW DIPLOMA COURSE FOR MUSEUM PERSONNEL

Legal Training for Global Art Collection Management

Law, Museums and the Material Culture

General
Diligent management of collections and claims is vital to museum professionals. No project can be secure unless its architects know how to predict and intercept legal conflict. The risk of such conflict hangs over the entire field of museum activity from acquisitions to loans to de-accessions. It is common throughout the global museum community. In all these fields there is a rising demand for realistic training in hands-on legal management.

To respond to these demands, the Institute of Art and Law (IAL) now invites museum administrators and officials to subscribe to a specifically modelled training programme offering expertise in the legal issues of collections management and leading to a qualification awarded by the Institute.

The programme requires no pre-existing knowledge of law. The key emphasis will be on the practical and pragmatic use of legal tools to improve the running and development of museums, their collections and their collaborative exhibition programmes. Legal rules and resources will be examined, not in terms of abstract theory, but in terms of what they mean to everyday museum management, how they can be used and what they can do for the museum community.

Aim of the Qualification
The programme will provide practical guidance and grounding on the following linked matters:
● What can go wrong: studies of real-life adverse events that have challenged museums, including physical hazards and legal entanglements;
● Essential sources of law: civil law, criminal law, administrative law, public and private international law, statutory and case law, all as they affect cultural objects and the institutions that possess them;
● Detecting and intercepting legal embarrassments: how to negotiate and maximise the advantage from a sale or loan agreement, how to handle legal trickery or disingenuousness, how to side-step a repetition of historic blunders;
● Reading and writing agreements: putting aims into words; how to draft and understand contracts for the acquisition of cultural objects into permanent collections (including joint acquisitions) and the creation of bailments (in-loans and out-loans);
● Triggering legal protection: making the most of the safeguards that law has to offer, such as import and export certificates, immunity from seizure, time for verification of title etc.;
● Ethical principles that bear upon the management of museum collections: is conformity to law enough; must museums show a responsible concern for issues that go beyond their own legal protection; how do these responsibilities mesh with law?

Delivery of the Programme
The course will be delivered in central London over a five-day period. It will take the form of a combination of formal seminars and orchestrated discussion groups. Full documentary materials will be provided.

Examination
Examination will be by oral presentation at the end of the course and by dissertation to be submitted following the conclusion of the course. IAL will provide and grade all test documentation, and award a Diploma of the Institute, the Diploma in Law and Collections Management.

Convenor
The programme is to be convened by Professor Norman Palmer QC Hon CBE FSA, a practising barrister with long experience in advising, assisting and defending museums in a variety of national and international contexts. He will be supported by contributions from Charlotte Davy, Chief Exhibitions Registrar, Art Gallery of New South Wales and President, of the Australian Registrars Council; Tony Griffiths, Head of the London office of K & L Gates; and other experts in the field.

Skeleton Programme and Distribution
Day 1:
Guiding Principles for Collections Managers; Framing and Phrasing Agreements; how Deficient Staff Work potentially subverts Enterprise and alienates Partners; the Vital Role of Record-Keeping
Day 2:
Accessions and Acquisitions: Sale and Purchase, Donation, Exchange and other Mechanisms; Shared ownership and cross-border collective acquisitions; Legal Issues in Assembling Revising and Upgrading Collections
Day 3:
Exhibitions, Loans and other Bailments, and Alternative Sharing Agreements; Anti-Seizure, Interpleader and other Devices; Planning for the Resolution of Opposing Positions among Lenders, Claimants, Museum Authorities
Day 4:
De-accessioning, Repatriation Claims, Relocation of Collections and Alternative Dispute Resolution; the Role of Individual Museum Personnel: Claims against Registrars, Curators etc (in contrast to Claims against their Institutions); the Power of Museum Staff to Commit or Compromise their Institution;
Day 5:
Case studies, enacted scenarios, drafting exercises and experiential learning. 

Course Fee and Registration Details
The course fee is £2,160 (£1,800 plus VAT). Some bursaries may be available to offset part of the course fee. For further details, contact Ruth Redmond-Cooper at rrc@ial.uk.com or by telephone on +44 1982 560 666. Download an application form here.