Advice on loans of Aircraft exhibits to Museums

Thankyou all for sharing some of your experiences and advice, I am now a little wiser than I was prior to placing this thread.
If from any personal experience there are any museums to drastically avoid then please PM me. Thanks again all, a great forum!

Absolutely – but dont exclude the non- Museum accredited Museums – very often the bigger Museums are worse than the smaller ones – ie an A-2 jacket from a local bomber base may mean more (and is more likely to be displayed) at a smaller Museum rather than a biggie which may have ten on show –

Always best to consider relevance to aircraft or local significance and choose somewhere YOU are comfortable having the item on display.

Finally you must NEVER put irreplaceable items on show – Museums can always be broken into and items stolen or destroyed in a fire – you may accept the risk but an insurance cheque cannot cover all losses – we for example never accept medals – also remember that the significance to you may be more than that of the Museum – ie Dads gasmask may be priceless to you but to the Museum it may be, well, another gas mask

Bottom line – use yer common – if it feels wrong, it probably is and Museums trade on their reputation – ask around and see what/who else has been put on loan.

Museums rely on the public for the majority of their exhibits – but word gets around, treat the public shabbily and items will stop coming in.

I think on the whole the community is very careful but there will always be hawks, ‘private collectors’ or theives waiting for their moment I am quite certain that forum members know who some of them are!

Dont mean to put you off matey far from it!

Any museum worth the name would provide a formal loan agreement, whatever the item.

From my experience dont trust a museum who doesnt give you a written receipt which confirms they will insure and safeguard the item – thats what we do – if its an exceptional item get a proper loan agreement drawn up (I can help) WITH PHOTOGRAPHS and an AGREED insurance/replacement value….

Are there any pitfalls in me doing this? Has anyone out here had any experiences of loaning stuff to museums?

Yeah & the place in questioned sold a bunch of it on Ebay, including skins from PA908, Merlin valve covers, R2800 cylinders, cams & carbs, fuselage skins from Stilletto etc….
Never got any of it back & the cops did **** about bringing the guy to justice

I’d be wary, Fly.buy.

I’d love to have the control column collection on public display, but I’m not sure it could be accomplished with adequate safeguards.

I certainly wouldn’t loan anything irreplaceable unless I was absolutely convinced that all risks had been minimalised.

Make sure the paperwork is bullet proof, and ask for confirmation of insurance on loaned items, not just their own stuff.

As a small example of what can go wrong, my pal and I loaned our Shackleton panel to the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry many years ago. We reckoned it would display well under the nose of their complete Shackleton, particularly since access to cockpits is so difficult.

Some months later, on a routine visit, we noticed several instruments were missing. It turned out that someone working on the Shack had decided our instruments would help complete it’s panel…

No doubt it was just a lack of awareness/understanding/communication between a volunteer worker and the Museum’s management, but it taught us a lesson.

Any museum with Registered or Accredited status should have multiple failsafes in place to prevent loss of objects, especially those it doesn’t own. The old phrase about stuff happening applies, but these days museums have to be very accountable and maintain working paper trails (and computer documentation) to allow them to locate and access (and provide access to) their collections. Backlogs are a big problem, (too much stuff to document) but that is not a concern regarding new accessions or loans, as these will be recorded in detail and stored to museum standards until they are displayed. Loans should be of a fixed term with everything agreed up front, so you know when your item is being returned, and they know where it is at all times.

So, ask if the museum is Registered. If it is, you should have no worries. If it isn’t, it will be an educated risk on your part to loan. Be aware that museums get many offers of donations, and have limited resources. Therefore loans are usually only considered for specific exhibitions or for very rare or unusual objects.

Cant help much but offer some advice,

A relitive of mine was awarded a medal for shooting down one of the first Zeps to be bought down by ground fire, it crashed in to the Thames Estuary, he knew some people who were in the Navy at Southend and was able to get them to collect some of the wreckage, including a small section of frame (about 6ft long) and a section of the fabric,

These were loaned out to a museum who looked after them very very well, another museum requested a loan of the collection, after gaining the famialy s permision they were packaged up and driven by the origianl museum to the exhibition where they were to remain for a number of weeks.

At the end of the exhibition the collection went missing and has never been found. 🙁

These were ireplaceable we dont blame the museum they were orginaly loaned to its the second museum that were “looking” after them that are to blame if they were lost than so be it, but if they were stollen I hope that who ever took them reads this and understands how much they ment to the famialy.

I was never lucky enough to meet the man that they were awarded to, he died before I was born but his daughter is still alive and is now getting old I would be a dream if we were able to reunite her with her Farthers medal and Zep parts but sadly I dont think that will ever happen, sadly I dont think we will ever see them again, they probaly sit in some scumbags private collection.

All I can say is, loan them to a museum you know you can trust, make sure you keep detailed description of every thing you loan out and take photos of them, sign a contract with the museum making sure that they can not sell them without your permision.

My collections of aircraft parts have outgrown my garage and……

Got any ‘arrier bits ??????? 😎

.