Museum Law: A Guide for Officers, Directors, and Counsel

From one of America’s foremost experts in museum and cultural heritage law, here is a comprehensive guide to both U.S. and international laws and conventions affecting museums, art galleries, natural and historic heritage, and other cultural organizations.

This authoritative guide:

• begins naturally with laws protecting art and artists (include artists’ freedom of expression, invasion of privacy, right of publicity, and trade laws),
• moves on to protection of artists’ property rights through copyright laws, and then
• goes into international laws and conventions (with full coverage of the Hugue Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import and Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and the UNIDROIT Convention on the International Return of Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects),
• features full coverage of U.S. laws protecting cultural heritage such as the Antiquities Act, the Historic Sites Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Film Preservation, State Preservation Acts, and the National Stolen Properties Act
• includes detailed coverage of U.S. laws protecting our natural heritage such as the Lacey Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act
• features much needed current coverage of laws affecting the operation of museums, ranging from organizational structure and accounting to governance and use of guards and volunteers
• includes invaluable details of laws related to museum collections, including:
• purchases
• loans
• gifts
• deaccessioning
• detailed coverage of laws and regulations governing the tax-exempt status for museums, including how to fill out required forms
• unprecedented attention to museums’ unrelated business taxable income from such increasingly common activities as gifts shops, snack bars, travel tours, and sponsorships.

No museum, cultural heritage site, or historical site can afford to be without this authoritative guide.

Marilyn E. Phelan, JD, (with honors), University of Texas School of Law, PhD, Texas Tech University, was the recipient of the Paul Whitfield Horn Professor of Law at Texas Tech University, which is one of the highest honors Texas Tech University can bestow on its professors. Phelan also has served as a professor of museum science at Texas Tech University. Phelan is a certified public accountant and is certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization as a specialist in tax law. She was given a YWCA Woman of Excellence award and was named a Super Lawyer by Texas Monthly. In 2011, the American Bar Association Section of Business Law, Nonprofit Committee, awarded her the ABA Outstanding Nonprofit Academic Award for contributions and achievements in the field of nonprofit law.