Posted on: April 1, 2019 by Emily Gould
On 17th April 2019, shortly after the original date set for the UK’s exit from the European Union, the European Parliament and Council adopted the Regulation on the import of cultural goods, a rather sweeping measure designed to control the import into EU Member States of certain items of cultural property. The legislation is aimed […]
Posted on: March 21, 2019 by Emily Gould
Cheffins Fine Art Auctioneers will today auction off some 428 paintings from a collection of over 1800 works owned by Hertfordshire County Council. The works to be sold include those by Barbara Hepworth and Keith Vaughan as well as highlights such as lino cuts by Edward Bawden and a pastel work by Scottish artist, Joan […]
Posted on: March 20, 2019 by Emily Gould
We reported late last year how busy the New York authorities have been in recent times in seizing and returning looted artefacts. The pattern has continued into the new year, with the widely reported return to the Egyptian Government of a first-century BC gilded coffin, acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art as the centre […]
Posted on: February 4, 2019 by Emily Gould
It is rare that the somewhat dry and complex topic of anti-money laundering regulation hits the headlines in the art world. Introduce an A-list celebrity and a couple of paintings by names such as Basquiat and Picasso, however, and the stakes are raised. In June 2017 the online forum artnet news reported on an investigation […]
Posted on: December 19, 2018 by Emily Gould
We were delighted to take part in the graduation ceremony yesterday for the first cohort of students of the Art, Business and Law LLM offered by the IAL in conjunction with Queen Mary University of London. In the splendid surroundings of QMUL’s People’s Palace, our students joined over 200 others to receive their LLM […]
Posted on: December 5, 2018 by Emily Gould
The adoption of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art by 44 nations in 1998 marked a deeply significant moment in the development of cultural policy in the 20th and 21st centuries. Whilst the extent of looting perpetrated by the Nazis during the 1933-45 period was fairly well understood at that stage, few would have […]
Posted on: December 3, 2018 by Emily Gould
It barely seems possible that we are fast approaching the first anniversary of the UK’s ratification of the Hague Convention 1954. 12th December 2017 marked the entry into force of the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Act 2017, which saw the UK, finally, making a formal commitment to adhere to the Convention’s obligations for the protection […]
Posted on: November 20, 2018 by Emily Gould
We were delighted to take part in the European Registrars Conference in London this week. This biennial event is highly impressive in its scope and reach, bringing together registrars from across the globe to discuss myriad issues from insurance to art loans to the practicalities of transportation and storage. In a fascinating opening discussion about […]
Posted on: November 14, 2018 by Emily Gould
Readers of this blog will have seen the post last week about Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, a piece of computer generated art created by the Obvious Collective through Artificial Intelligence, which recently sold at auction for USD 432,500. Amongst the challenges posed by AI technology for copyright law, is the question of how […]
Posted on: October 29, 2018 by Emily Gould
Who does the modern law of copyright seek to protect? We are familiar today with the claim that artistic copyright protects artists and, perhaps, users of copyright works. Roll back 150 years, to the nineteenth century, and artistic copyright was also understood in a number of other ways, which are long forgotten today. For instance, […]