Posted on: August 31, 2023 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, on the advice of Historic England, announced recently that the hulk of the nineteenth-century iron steamship, Lady Alice Kenlis, located at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk has been granted protection as a Scheduled Monument. The hulk (the term is used to describe an old ship which has been permanently […]
Posted on: August 22, 2023 by Elizabeth Pearson
The State of Western Australia is repealing laws it introduced “to prevent another Juukan Gorge”, after its reforms were labelled too prescriptive, complicated and confusing. The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2021 (WA) (2021 Act) was enacted after 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal rock shelters were controversially destroyed by Rio Tinto during a mine expansion project in 2020. […]
Posted on: August 14, 2023 by Rebecca Hawkes-Reynolds
The month of July saw two opposing planning decisions being made with one thing in common: their subject and focus being designated heritage assets; Stonehenge and the proposed tunnel within its vicinity and the Marks and Spencer building on Oxford Street, London. Both of them highlight the complexity of dealing with heritage assets within the […]
Posted on: August 7, 2023 by Olivia Shaw
A Question of Restitution Is a new wind of cultural migration blowing? Around the world, cultural artefacts are being returned from museum collections to their homelands. In particular, a growing socio-political awareness of historic wrongs has focused critical attention on the relationship anthropology and museology share with Indigenous peoples worldwide. As policies and practices on […]
Posted on: August 3, 2023 by Marie Cornu
Carnac is one of the most important sites for megalithic architecture, protected in large part from the end of the nineteenth century as a historic monument under the Law of 30 March 1887, the first ever legislative text to introduce a binding legal regime in the area of heritage protection. Carnac appeared on the list […]
Posted on: July 24, 2023 by Paul Stevenson
Media reports in recent weeks have reminded us of a fascinating case study on contested heritage rights, shipwrecks and salvage. Vaunting a proposal to smelt down a bronze eagle which formerly adorned a Nazi warship, the President of Uruguay has found himself in the middle of a cultural heritage storm, having opined that: “It occurred […]
Posted on: July 17, 2023 by Stephanie Drawdy
In the last several years, the U.S. Army has been raising up a generation of modern-day “scholar warriors” to follow in the pioneering steps of WWII-era Monuments Officers. These warriors are Army Reserve Civil Affairs Soldiers who, like their predecessors, have a range of specialties that they can utilise to advance the mission of defending cultural […]
Posted on: July 7, 2023 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
The July 2023 issue of Art Antiquity and Law has now been published and hard copies will be winging their way to subscribers this week. Online subscribers will be able to access it in the usual way. This issue contains a thought-provoking article by law professors Peter Cumper and Tom Lewis on the vexed issue […]
Posted on: July 3, 2023 by Lilian Palmer
On 2 May 2023, the government published the draft Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill, which outlines the requirements that venues and other organisations will need to meet in order to ensure public safety and preparedness in case of a terrorist attack. The Bill, also known as Martyn’s Law as a tribute to Martyn Hett, one […]
Posted on: June 26, 2023 by Tom Lewis
On 12 June 2023 two environmental protesters were convicted by a Vatican court of aggravated damage to the Laocoön statue, one of the most precious treasures of the Vatican Museums’ collection, believed to have been carved in Rhodes around 40-30 BCE. The protestors, Guido Viero and Ester Goffi, are members of the group Last Generation […]