Posted on: April 29, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Earlier this month, it was reported that Canada was returning a 900-year-old sandstone statue to India. This was done with all the necessary pomp and ceremony, with each nation’s prime minister more than ready for a dual photo op with the piece. Of course it represented much more than mere cultural restitution: as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated, cultural relations between […]
Posted on: April 20, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Having highlighted the issue in an earlier post, the criticism of the upcoming British Museum exhibition, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilization (a purposely ambiguous title?) has become more vociferous with a cutting article published recently in The Guardian provocatively entitled ‘Preservation or plunder? The battle over the British Museum’s Indigenous Australian show’. Past events involving the Dja Dja Wurrung bark etchings are […]
Posted on: April 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Today it was announced that British Museum Director Neil MacGregor will step down at the end of 2015. This will come as a shock to most. Certainly since within the last year the heads of two of Britain’s most respectable cultural institutions, the National Gallery (Nicholas Penny) and the National Portrait Gallery (Sandy Nairne), have also […]
Posted on: March 13, 2015 by Alexander Herman
The British Museum has an upcoming exhibition of art and artefacts from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders entitled Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilization set to open on 23 April 2015. However, as one recent Guardian article makes clear, all is not well in relations between the museum and representatives of certain indigenous groups, namely the Dja Dja Wurrung people of central Victoria. This […]
Posted on: January 13, 2015 by Alexander Herman
On the heels of McBride v Christie’s Australia, came another auction dispute from Australia, this one involving the children of renowned painter John Olsen and Sotheby’s Australia. Sotheby’s had listed for auction an Olsen work entitled Mother, which had been painted in 1964 for the painter’s second wife, marking the birth of their daughter. The children, now executors of their mother’s […]
Posted on: January 9, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Judgment was rendered last month by the Supreme Court of New South Wales in the case of McBride v Christie’s Australia. The case involved the auction sale of a painting by Australian modernist artist Albert Tucker in May 2000 to a barrister named Louise McBride for AUD $75,000. Later, in 2010, when McBride made arrangements to sell the […]
Posted on: October 29, 2014 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
Former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam passed away last week at the age of 98. He had served as Prime Minister between 1972 to 1975, during a turbulent period of Australia’s history. He had also spoken at an Institute of Art and Law event in 2001 on the topic of the Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles. He was […]
Posted on: June 16, 2014 by Alexander Herman
Inspired by ‘international law’ and the 1998 Washington Principles, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne recently announced that it will be restituting a portrait to the heirs of its original owner, Jewish industrialist Richard Semmel. The portrait, originally thought to be a Van Gogh original, had been part of Semmel’s collection which was dispersed and sold under duress by […]
Posted on: June 2, 2014 by Alexander Herman
As reported here late last year, the famed City of Adelaide ship had been set to leave Scotland for its name city, Adelaide in South Australia. The Australian group seeking its relocation, Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Ltd [CSCoAL], had obtained an Open General Export Licence supposedly for this purpose. The ship left and after a brief stop […]
Posted on: May 16, 2014 by Alexander Herman
This week, the Court of Appeal of Victoria in Australia, rendered an appeal decision regarding a painting by the celebrated Australian impressionist Rupert Bunny. The work has sometimes been referred to as ‘Female Reading in Sun”. The case, Levy v. Watt [2014] VSCA 60, which came down on 14 May 2014, involved an analysis of […]