Tag Archives: australia

MacGregor’s lasting legacy at the BM?

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 […]

Demand for return of bark etchings as new exhibition set to open

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 […]

Another Australian auction dispute

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 […]

Recent authenticity dispute in Australia

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 […]

Gough Whitlam on the Marbles

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 […]

Australia makes its first Nazi art restitution

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 […]

City of Adelaide Export Scandal

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 […]

Appeal of decision on Rupert Bunny painting

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 […]

The Adelaide likely to return to Australia despite best efforts of campaigners

Posted on: November 12, 2013 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper

The Adelaide which is the oldest surviving composite clipper ship in the World having been built in Sunderland in 1864, is now expected to be exported to Australia despite a huge campaign to keep it here. The ship (which was Listed as Grade A in Scotland and is older than the Cutty Sark), was formerly in the collection of the […]