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Posted By: warshawlaw

What the Met has done to the Burdick collection is a crying shame and is illustrative of how risky it is to give something to a museum in the mistaken belief that they will actually use it without a contractual obligation. I doubt that Jeff Burdick would have wanted his baseball cards to be locked away and unavailable except in chintzy 100 card lots on a hallway wall with no indexing or imaging available. If I was going to donate something to a museum, you can bet that the donation agreement would contain one hell of an out clause to permit my heirs to retrieve the object unless certain use criteria were met.