Posted on: May 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman
An interesting recent article in the New York Times recounts the struggle between two Spanish Museums over the right to display four paintings, including two masterpieces of European art (Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross). The works have been held at the Prado Museum in Madrid since being sent […]
Posted on: May 4, 2015 by Nina M. Neuhaus
A recent art fraud scandal has put Mr Yves Bouvier into the media spotlight. Mr Bouvier, also known as the ‘Freeport King’, oversees freeport operations in Geneva, Luxembourg, and Singapore. He is the largest private shareholder of Ports Francs & Entreports de Geneve SA, the company running the freeport in Geneva. (The majority shareholder is […]
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 16, 2015 by Alexander Herman
‘What do you know about art restitution?’ ‘Not a thing.’ The question comes from Maria Altmann, played by Helen Mirren, and the answer is from her lawyer, Randol Schoenberg, played by Ryan Reynolds, in Woman in Gold, the film dramatising Altmann’s quest for the return of five Gustav Klimt paintings that had been taken from her family during the […]
Posted on: April 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Newspapers around the globe last week reported on the story of a Palestinian man from Gaza, Rabie Dardouna, who had unwittingly sold a door with a Banksy mural on it. Banksy had reportedly taken a tour of Gaza following the 2014 Israel-Gaza War and put up a number of characteristic works on bombed-out buildings. This […]
Posted on: March 31, 2015 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
On Wednesday 13 May 2015 from 2-5.30 pm there will be an Institute of Art & Law seminar in association with Maurice Turnor Gardner LLP held at the firm’s London offices in Milton Street EC2Y 9BH. The seminar will explore the legal issues surrounding international art transactions, covering questions of title, customs duties and freeports, working with foreign […]
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: March 10, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Yesterday, an ‘early day motion‘ was presented before the UK Parliament by MP Andrew George calling on Britain to engage in a ‘gracious act’ and reunite the sculptures at the British Museum (aka the Elgin Marbles) with those kept in Athens’s purpose-built Acropolis Museum, ‘in the shadow of the monument to which they belong’. More specifically, the motion calls […]
Posted on: February 9, 2015 by Alexander Herman
At the Institute of Art and Law, we often speak of ‘law as artefact’. This is a twist on the usual law of artefacts, which has been the centrepiece of the Institute’s courses and publications for over twenty years. Professor Norman Palmer, in his Institute lectures, often makes reference to the Cyrus Cylinder at the British Museum or […]
Posted on: January 6, 2015 by Alexander Herman
The new Tim Burton film, Big Eyes, was released over the holidays. It tells the story of American painter Margaret Keane (née Hawkins), whose works for the most part depicted young waif-like girls with enlarged, often tearful, eyes. Throughout the 1960s, as the paintings became increasingly popular, Margaret’s husband, Walter, would pass them off as his own. The paintings […]