Posted on: December 23, 2018 by Alexander Herman
In 1897, British troops marched on Benin City, capital of the fabled West African kingdom of Benin, ruled over by a powerful Oba. The attack was called a ‘punitive expedition’ because it was a retaliatory response to the Oba having massacred a British delegation of eight officials, two traders and local escorts the previous month. […]
Posted on: September 26, 2018 by Holly Woodhouse
Hedge funds are competing with a consortium of British museums to purchase 5,500 artefacts salvaged from the Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912 with the loss of 1,500 lives. The current owner of the artefacts, Premier Exhibitions, is selling them after filing for bankruptcy in the United States in 2016. The […]
Posted on: September 4, 2018 by Alexander Herman
A once-in-a-generation case has caused major ripples in the Canadian museum world. And we’re not talking about the attempted sale of a Chagall by the National Gallery of Canada this spring. No, this was an actual court case, before the Federal Court of Canada, to determine whether the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board (the […]
Posted on: July 19, 2018 by Makoto Shimada
On 1st June 2018, the Kokkai, the National Diet of Japan, enacted the Substantial Amendment to the Law for the Protection of Cultural Property. The new Act will come into force on 1st April 2019. Under the 1950 Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, cultural property with historical or artistic value is selected by the government […]
Posted on: April 27, 2018 by Alexander Herman
The National Gallery of Canada, as reported earlier, had plans to sell one of its two major works by Marc Chagall, La Tour Eiffel, at auction at Christies in New York on 15 May, with an estimate of $6 million to $ 9 million. This led to much uproar in the Canadian press and amongst the […]
Posted on: November 28, 2017 by Alexander Herman and Holly Woodhouse
Last month, on the 21st of October, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (along with local police) seized an ancient Achaemenid Persian bas-relief from the European Fine Art Fair at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. The item was being offered for sale by the London-based art dealer Robert Wace for roughly $1.2 million. The […]
Posted on: November 24, 2017 by Alexander Herman
The Institute of Art & Law was in Doha, Qatar last week providing an in-house training course on art, law and collections management for Qatar Museums, the governmental body that oversees the state-owned museums in the small Persian Gulf state. The course included one day on intellectual property and collections, another on contracts, acquisitions and […]
Posted on: May 18, 2017 by Emily Gould
Tomorrow (Friday 19th May), a new convention intended to tackle international cultural property crime will be opened for signature by the Council of Europe (the ‘CoE’, Europe’s leading human rights organisation, including 47 member states, set up to promote democracy and protect human rights and the rule of law in Europe; not to be confused with […]
Posted on: November 5, 2016 by Emily Gould
Following our post earlier this week on the second reading in the House of Commons of the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill, we were interested to read an article in The Times the next day by Sir Edward Garnier, QC, MP and former solicitor-general.* Sir Edward had rehearsed, at some length during the Commons debate, the […]
Posted on: October 11, 2016 by Alexander Herman
Last week, Professor Norman Palmer QC CBE passed away. He was the Academic Principal of the Institute of Art & Law, having served as its guiding light for over twenty years. It was because of him – his tireless commitment to teaching new generations of students, his profound understanding of the law of cultural property […]