Customs brokers and international shipping

Hello,

I work for a university art gallery, and we received on loan paintings from Mexico. Upon their return shipment back to Mexico, we are experiencing delays and fees as we could not describe the shipment as being a gift/loan, now the artist is being charged fees, etc.
This is the first international shipment I have worked on, and really, the first for my department. Does anyone have any advice for how to get work shipped back internationally without incurring fees to the artist, or any information on customs brokers? The work is stuck in Mexico, and we think we will need to have it shipped back to us in Michigan so we can re-ship it back to Mexico.
Any thoughts/insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much.

This dilemma seems to fall within the domain of registration. This forum is the most broadly available and public face of our group but it is not the most active. For rapid response to a specific question like this you probably want to go to a listserve and get your inquiry directly into the inboxes of the folks who know. PACCIN has always had a large number of Registrars and Collections Managers as key participants and supporters. You can join our ListServe by find the tab with that name at the top of the articles page. This will put you in touch with both registrars and commercial Art Services professionals some of whom deal with these issues daily. Another source to try if you want a virtually guaranteed response is the RCAAM list (you may still need to be a of AAM to join this one though) a newer organization that also has a forum is ARCS (Association of Registrars and Collections Specialists). All of these organizations and their links can be found on the resources page of this site. http://www.paccin.org/content.php?140-Resources
Good Luck
Ashley

How did you solve the issue? I'm planning a large shipment in the near future and I'm wondering if I can do it by myself or if I should contact some customs consultants like Artys Transit or W2C Training.