Abandoned Property                                              Termination Notice for Undocumented Objects

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The Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan, while conducting an inventory of the collection, found numerous objects that were found in collection (FIC) with no accession numbers or identification of their immediate owners. The lack of ownership prevents the museum from using them to serve its mission, all the while bearing the costs and responsibilities to care for them including storage, record maintenance, insurance, periodic inventory, and general overhead.  The Museum hereby wishes to return these objects to the rightful owner or gain proper titles to these objects in order to better use or dispose of them.  Freeing up collection storage will allow the museum to focus its limited resources on better caring for its legally owned collection and presentation to the public.

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By following the notice procedure under The Michigan Museum Disposition of Property Act of 1992, 399.611, the museum has posted notice in the Alpena News and online information of FIC objects. Please see the following list of objects for descriptions. Party of interest who wishes to claim the property, please submit a claim to Sarah Honeycutt, Collections Manager (collections@bessermuseum.org), Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan, 491 Johnson Street, Alpena, MI 49707.  Please include in the mail sufficient proof of your legal ownership including: original receipt, loan agreement or document that recorded the name, address, precise descriptions, or images matching the object. The claimant needs to confirm that he or she is the sole owner or that he or she has complete authority from all the owners to make the claim. If the museum deems the evidence is sufficient, the claimant is responsible to make arrangements to collect the property within 30 days from the date museum acknowledges his or her ownership. If no claim is filed after 6 months since the notice is posted, the FIC objects automatically become the property of the Besser Museum for Northeast Michigan.

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Click here to view the list of Found In Collection (FIC) objects list.