Posted on: September 5, 2014 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
Yesterday’s Acts of Grace seminar on the voluntary return of cultural property was held at the historic Church of St Olave in Hart Street, a jewel amidst the bustle of London’s City. Papers were presented by a variety of speakers on a variety of topics. They were as follows: The colourful story of St Olave’s by Reverend […]
Posted on: August 26, 2014 by Alexander Herman
A few recent articles have reported on the looting of antiquities from the areas of Syria and Iraq controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS): in The Guardian in June, The Sunday Times in July and the International Business Times. It is unclear from the sources whether such looting is actually being perpetrated by members of ISIS or […]
Posted on: August 8, 2014 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
What do the eighteenth-century tapestries of France’s Château de Versainville, the Hereford Pike and a Cézanne watercolour have in common? Well, they have all been the subject of voluntary acts of return to their original owners by the institutions holding them. And they will be discussed in the upcoming seminar entitled Acts of Grace – Displaced Cultural […]
Posted on: August 1, 2014 by Alexander Herman
The human remains of an Aboriginal woman from Tasmania who had lived in the early nineteenth century were returned to Hobart, Tasmania earlier today. The remains had been acquired by the Anatomy Institute in Berlin, Germany in the 1840s and, more recently, resided in the collection of Berlin’s Charité Medical Museum. The Charité Museum, in returning the […]
Posted on: July 8, 2014 by Alexander Herman
It has recently been announced that five panels carved by the Te Atiawa iwi in the late eighteenth-century have been returned from Switzerland to New Zealand by the wife and son of the late antiquities collector George Ortiz. The panels had been discovered buried in a swamp near Motunui in 1972 and were subsequently exported […]
Posted on: May 22, 2014 by Alexander Herman
The European Council’s 1993 Directive on the return of cultural objects unlawfully removed from the territory of a Member State (93/7/EEC) will soon be recast. The proposed updated Directive was approved by the European Parliament and Council on 15 May 2014. The changes involve: Extending the scope of cultural objects covered to include all nationally designated cultural objects (not just those listed […]
Posted on: May 2, 2014 by Alexander Herman
The great restitutionist Colin Renfrew, better known perhaps as Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, has recently written a piece in the Art Newspaper on the return of seven of the fifteen pieces of the Sevso Treasure. This story was first commented on in this blog here. Renfrew was careful to explain the tricky situation regarding the ownership of […]
Posted on: April 13, 2014 by Nina M. Neuhaus
Since 1929, a small-scale (16 cm in height) statue made of green stone and dating from the period between the 2nd century BC and 2nd century AD has been part of the permanent collection of the Historical Museum of Berne. The statue originates from the Andean highlands of Bolivia, where it was worshiped as a deity […]