Posted on: September 22, 2015 by Alexander Herman
An important legal settlement has been reached between the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the American branch of an Armenian Church. The dispute, which had dragged on for a number of years, involved eight illustrated manuscript pages that had once been part of the Zeyt’un Gospels but which had been separated from the rest of the […]
Posted on: July 29, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Those adventurous enough to explore the London area of Holland Park for their cultural fix (there is opera in the park after all), may have come across the house of Frederic (Lord) Leighton, which is open to the public as a museum. Leighton, who was President of the Royal Academy during the late Nineteenth Century, created the Victorian collector’s […]
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: 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 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: December 8, 2014 by Mathilde Roellinger
The French Constitutional Council, in a decision rendered on 14 November 2014, declared that article 2 of the law of 23 June 1941 concerning the export of works of art did not comply with the Constitution. The application for a priority preliminary ruling was submitted by an owner of precious furniture who, in the 1980s, […]
Posted on: November 11, 2014 by Alexander Herman
Much has been said in the media of late about the Greek claim to the Elgin Marbles. But last week came a response from the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor. It was written up in The Times on Friday 7 November, but is sadly unavailable online to non-subsribers. In response to the claims made […]
Posted on: October 14, 2014 by Alexander Herman
Barristers Geoffrey Robertson and Norman Palmer will be advising the Greek government this week in regards to the Parthenon (or Elgin) Marbles. Their visit to Greece has, for one reason or another, already received an inordinate amount of media attention, both in Greece and abroad. Robertson, Palmer and their legal team will be discussing with Greek […]
Posted on: November 18, 2013 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
In 2013 several of the major international conventions for the protection of cultural property have witnessed a growth in the number of ratifications and acceptances. The First and Second Protocols to the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict have been ratified by New Zealand (which ratified the main […]