Which law governs the disposal of museum collection items in the Netherlands?

The Heritage Act (Erfgoedwet) governs the disposal procedure for cultural goods held by public authorities, and that procedure is mandatory. Registered museums also follow the LAMO, the self-regulatory instrument of the Dutch Museums Association. The LAMO is not a statute, but a museum that ignores it can lose its registration. For a museum in public ownership, both apply.

Who is liable if a borrowed work is damaged at the museum?

Usually the borrowing museum, because that is what almost every loan agreement says, and the nail-to-nail policy covers the damage. It gets harder when the work also loses value because of that damage. Restoration does not always restore the value, and whether that loss is compensated depends on the policy conditions and on what the loan agreement says about this scenario.

Does a museum have to comply with the Fair Practice Code?

If you receive national subsidy through the BIS or through one of the national cultural funds, compliance with the Fair Practice Code has been a subsidy condition since 2025. In practice that means fair fees for the freelancers and self-employed professionals you work with, in line with the recommended rates of Platform ACCT and the Kunstenbond. The code also sets requirements for good employment practice and for transparency about working conditions.

Can a museum lose its registration with the Museum Register?

Yes. Breaching the Ethical Code for Museums, failing to follow the LAMO when disposing of objects, or not meeting the Museumnorm can lead to removal from the register. The Museum Register starts with a conversation, but removal is possible in the end. You then also lose membership of the Dutch Museums Association, and with it the Museumkaart.

What if heirs come forward for a work that has hung in the museum for decades?

This happens more often than you would expect, particularly with works that came in on loan long ago without the arrangements being properly recorded. The first question is what was agreed at the time, because a loan, a deposit for safekeeping and a transfer of ownership lead to very different outcomes. After that come the questions of who holds the rights now and whether the museum can rely on limitation. Cases like these call for historical and legal research side by side.

Legal advice for museums

Showing art is only part of the work. A museum manages a collection, lends works out and borrows them in, and hires curators and restorers. On top of that comes the accounting it owes funding bodies on governance and fair pay.

Legal questions run through all of it. Even so, museums tend to call a lawyer once there is already a problem.

At Liaise Advocaten, Jaap Versteeg is the contact for legal advice to museums and art collections. He knows the sector from the inside, having served as a supervisor at cultural festivals and orchestras, and he is a member of the Association for Art, Culture and Law (Vereniging voor Kunst, Cultuur en Recht).

What follows is Dutch law. It applies to museums established in the Netherlands and, in many cases, to foreign institutions lending works to or borrowing from a Dutch museum.

Loans between museums and private collections

Museums lend and borrow every day. Most of the time it goes well. When it does not, it is damage in transit or discolouration from the wrong room conditions. Theft happens. So, rarely, does seizure of a work sitting abroad. The loan agreement is how you divide those risks.

Jaap sees many museums working from standard templates that have circulated for years. As a starting point they are fine. They simply do not cover every situation. If a work comes back with light damage that only shows months later, the question is whether the standard policy compensates that loss of value. Or the lender wants a sale restriction and the borrower refuses, and the negotiation stalls on a point the template does not know. That is when it pays to have your loan agreement reviewed or drafted.

More about the loan agreement →

Collection management and disposal under the LAMO and the Heritage Act

Collection management is framed ever more tightly in law. Museums registered with the Netherlands Museum Register (Museumregister Nederland) endorse the Ethical Code for Museums and keep an up-to-date collection plan approved by the competent board. The Museumnorm 2025 sets requirements for documentation, conservation and accessibility.

If you want to dispose of objects, you follow the LAMO, the Guideline for the Disposal of Museum Objects (Leidraad Afstoting Museale Objecten). The most recent version dates from 2023 and describes four steps. It starts with internal research and it ends with the actual transfer. The intended disposal stays on the Disposals Database (Afstotingsdatabase) for two months, so that other museums can take the object over.

If the museum is owned by a municipality, province or other public authority, the disposal procedure under the Heritage Act (Erfgoedwet) applies on top of that. It is mandatory and takes precedence over the LAMO. As soon as there is reasonable ground to suspect an object is of special significance for Dutch cultural heritage, you seek advice from an independent committee. A museum that does not follow the procedure correctly can lose its registration.

Jaap helps museums set up disposal procedures. He assesses which procedure applies, guides the process and resolves the questions that come up along the way.

More about collection management and the Heritage Act →

The Governance Code Cultuur and the liability of supervisors

The Governance Code Cultuur sets out guidelines for sound, accountable and transparent governance. Most museums now work with a supervisory board. Moving to that model, or amending existing articles of association, raises practical questions at once. How do you divide powers between the executive board and the supervisory board? Then there is the liability of individual supervisors, and the question whether the articles meet what funding bodies require.

Funds and public authorities increasingly make compliance with the Governance Code a hard condition. The Council for Culture (Raad voor Cultuur) assesses in the BIS advisory round how institutions handle the code. A description that is too brief, or insufficiently self-critical, counts against you there.

Fair pay and false self-employment in the museum sector

For an exhibition you bring in curators, restorers, designers and photographers alongside the permanent team. The contract types vary, and so do the legal questions.

Since 2025, compliance with the Fair Practice Code has been a condition for national subsidies. In practice that means fair fees for your freelancers and self-employed professionals, in line with the recommended rates of Platform ACCT and the Kunstenbond. At the same time you have to make sure the Dutch tax authorities do not treat your freelance arrangements as employment in disguise. Enforcement on false self-employment has been tightened and hits the cultural sector hard, precisely because so much of the work here is done by freelancers.

Jaap advises museums on translating fair pay into their contract practice, on the line between freelance work and employment, and on the obligations that come with each.

Copyright in exhibitions and reproductions

Showing a work is in many cases allowed without permission, under the exhibition right in the Dutch Copyright Act (Auteurswet). Reproduction is another matter. Put the work in the catalogue, on the website, in promotional material or on social media, and you usually need permission from the rights holder. That applies to every work whose maker died less than seventy years ago.

At a group exhibition with dozens of artists, clearing those rights becomes a project of its own, administratively and financially. For digital uses, think of online collection databases and virtual tours, the rules are less settled still.

More about copyright →

More about provenance research and restitution →

Get in touch with Jaap Versteeg

Do you work at a museum and have a legal question about loans, collection management, governance or freelance contracts? Jaap Versteeg knows the museum world and is happy to think it through with you. Call 020 675 88 21 or email him for an initial consultation.

It is possible, but the threshold is high. Supervisory board members of a Dutch foundation have to perform their task properly, a standard that since the Management and Supervision of Legal Entities Act applies expressly to the supervisory board as well. Fall short and you are liable to the foundation, and that liability is joint and several. The whole body is addressed, not only the person who made the proposal.

Liability arises only where there is serious blame. A decision that turns out badly is not enough. Think of deciding without the information you needed, pressing on after a warning, or failing to disclose a conflict of interest.

Escaping liability individually is possible. Show that the decision is not attributable to you and that you tried to avert the consequences, and you are in the clear. A note of your objection in the minutes is the evidence you will need later.

For museums the Governance Code Cultuur comes on top of this. The code is not law, but courts and funding bodies do look at it when asking whether supervision was in order. Directors and officers insurance covers the financial risk, not the blame.