The Oklahoma Museums Association Standing Professional Committee, OKRA (Oklahoma Registrars Association), is pleased to announce that Ildiko DeAngelis, Associate Professor Emerita of George Washington University, will be the speaker at the July 28 workshop on Deaccessioning.  The workshop will be held at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History in Norman, Oklahoma.

From developing useful policies and procedures to protecting the public trust, museums truly walk a fine line when deaccessioning collection objects.  The process can be an ethical land mine if proper procedures are not followed.  The same can be said for claiming ownership of material without provenance found in collections.  Museum professionals continually struggle with these topics.

The speaker's experience lends itself to these issues. Professor DeAngelis retires as the director of the Museum Studies Program in the Columbian School of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University this July.  She is a graduate of Rutgers University, Newark College, with a B.A. in art history.  She received an M.A. in art history from the State University of New York, Binghamton and a certificate of training in Museum Administration from the Smithsonian Institution.  In 1980, she obtained a law degree from American University's Washington College of Law, graduating magna cum laude.

She entered the museum profession as a contract assistant registrar at the Smithsonian's National Collection of Fine Arts.  In 1985, she became the Smithsonian's assistant general counsel.  She left to work in Tokyo and returned to her position at the Smithsonian in 1989.  Professor DeAngelis was appointed director of George Washington's Museum Studies Program in 1999.

Her area of specialization is focused on the legal, ethical and policy issues involved in managing museum collections.  She has served for years as faculty and member of the steering committee of the American Law Institute/American Bar Association's annual course of study:  Legal Problems of Museum Administration.  She lectures widely at professional museum conferences and workshops.

Her publications include articles of special interest to museums on subjects such as stolen art, unclaimed loans, copyright and governance.  She was contributing author of a section on copyright and content-related rights in the 1998-revised edition of Marie C. Malaro's Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections, Smithsonian Press.  Her recent publications include, "How Much Provenance is Enough? Post-Schultz Guidelines for Art Museum Acquisitions of Archaeological Materials" and "Ancient Art," appearing in Art and Cultural Heritage: Law, Policy and Practice, edited by Barbara Hoffman, Cambridge University Press 2006.

OMA is excited to host such an esteemed colleague and looks forward to having a good turnout for this important workshop!  The workshop will be from 11:00am - 4:00pm.  Registration deadline is Friday, July 18.  Registration is $50 for OMA members, $60 for non-members.  Lunch is included.  Scholarships are available for OMA members.  Register online or submit a scholarship application at http://www.okmuseums.org/.

Partners and sponsors include the Oklahoma Arts Council, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, ConocoPhillips, The Anne and Henry Zarrow Foundation, Kirkpatrick Family Fund, Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and Will Rogers Memorial Museums.