Posted on: November 28, 2018 by Alexander Herman
Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron received the report he commissioned in March on the restitution of African artefacts currently held in French Museums. The commission followed the President’s speech in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, delivered one year ago today, in which he had called for “the conditions to be met within five years for the […]
Posted on: November 19, 2018 by Alexander Herman
We are happy to announce that the latest issue of Art Antiquity and Law is out. The issue features thought-provoking articles on a number of legal issues new and old. This includes Sydney lawyer Elizabeth Pearson’s article ‘Colonial Statutes and Statues: Rethinking the Law on Aboriginal Cultural Heritage in New South Wales’, which considers the […]
Posted on: November 12, 2018 by Alexander Herman
Tonight, Sotheby’s auction house in New York will hold a major sale of early 20th century European masterworks, including pieces by Kandinsky, Monet, Magritte and Miró. But perhaps most exceptional will be three restituted works that had been spoliated during the Nazi period. Two of these were returned to the heirs of Alfred Flechtheim, a […]
Posted on: November 9, 2018 by Alexander Herman
A big splash was made when a lot sold at Christie’s New York last month for $432,500. That sort of amount is usually small change for the major international auction house, but not when it comes to a particular sort of artwork: one made by artificial intelligence (or AI). In fact, this was reported to […]
Posted on: October 8, 2018 by Alexander Herman
On Friday night in London, Sotheby’s auctioned off a ‘unique’ version of Banksy’s famous image of a young girl reaching for a red balloon. It was the last lot of the Contemporary Art auction in an important week for the London art market, with Frieze London having opened earlier that day. But just as the […]
Posted on: September 12, 2018 by Alexander Herman
A stern-looking man with a gun turns towards a metallic device mounted on the wall. He places one hand on the device’s handle and checks his watch. It is 12.04. Next we see an analogue clock hanging above a presenter reading the BBC radio news into a microphone. The time on the clock reads 12.05. […]
Posted on: September 4, 2018 by Alexander Herman
A once-in-a-generation case has caused major ripples in the Canadian museum world. And we’re not talking about the attempted sale of a Chagall by the National Gallery of Canada this spring. No, this was an actual court case, before the Federal Court of Canada, to determine whether the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board (the […]
Posted on: August 10, 2018 by Alexander Herman
An exhibition entitled James Cook: The Voyages, currently on show at the British Library, gives an excellent overview of the journeys around the world taken by the famous explorer in the mid-to-late 18th century. The eponymous captain is of course known for being the first European to explore the eastern coast of Australia and, more contentiously, […]
Posted on: July 24, 2018 by Alexander Herman
Yesterday, an Italian painting with a colourful history had its fate sealed by a UK court. The Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court has decided that Arts Council England (ACE), the delegated authority that issues export licences for cultural property leaving UK shores, was not the ‘competent authority’ to issue an EU licence for […]
Posted on: July 9, 2018 by Alexander Herman
An interesting case came down last month from the High Court in London in the matter of Jeddi v Sotheby’s. The case was brought by an Iranian antiquities dealer named Ali Jeddi against Sotheby’s UK for refusing to return his property, a 10th century Fatimid jar made of translucent quartz and finely decorated with images of […]