Posted on: December 11, 2020 by Rebecca Hawkes-Reynolds
On Friday 2nd December 2020 it is likely that many archaeologists, curators and metal detectorists woke up pleased at the announcement from the Government that the definition of treasure for the Treasure Act 1996 will be revised. However, it is also equally probable that the same number were perplexed and worried as to how this […]
Posted on: June 17, 2020 by Elizabeth Pearson
The destruction of 46,000-year-old sacred Aboriginal rock shelters in Western Australia has prompted a national inquiry and calls for urgent reform of Indigenous cultural heritage law. During a mine expansion project, Rio Tinto detonated explosives in the Juukan Gorge in May, destroying two deep cave sites of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura People (PKKP). […]
Posted on: February 4, 2019 by Emily Gould
It is rare that the somewhat dry and complex topic of anti-money laundering regulation hits the headlines in the art world. Introduce an A-list celebrity and a couple of paintings by names such as Basquiat and Picasso, however, and the stakes are raised. In June 2017 the online forum artnet news reported on an investigation […]
Posted on: November 14, 2018 by Emily Gould
Readers of this blog will have seen the post last week about Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, a piece of computer generated art created by the Obvious Collective through Artificial Intelligence, which recently sold at auction for USD 432,500. Amongst the challenges posed by AI technology for copyright law, is the question of how […]
Posted on: October 29, 2018 by Emily Gould
Who does the modern law of copyright seek to protect? We are familiar today with the claim that artistic copyright protects artists and, perhaps, users of copyright works. Roll back 150 years, to the nineteenth century, and artistic copyright was also understood in a number of other ways, which are long forgotten today. For instance, […]
Posted on: October 11, 2018 by Emily Gould
Following the excitement of the sale of the self-destructing Banksy last Friday night about which we reported on Monday, it has all gone rather quiet. We half-expected to hear more, perhaps from the aggrieved purchaser or maybe even from those ‘in the know’ to reassure us that it had all been one big hoax. Maybe […]
Posted on: October 8, 2018 by Alexander Herman
On Friday night in London, Sotheby’s auctioned off a ‘unique’ version of Banksy’s famous image of a young girl reaching for a red balloon. It was the last lot of the Contemporary Art auction in an important week for the London art market, with Frieze London having opened earlier that day. But just as the […]
Posted on: May 13, 2018 by Elizabeth Pearson
Aboriginal cultural heritage law in New South Wales is facing its biggest reform in more than 40 years. The State Government invited public comment and is currently considering submissions received on a draft bill to create a standalone Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act,[i] amid widespread agreement that legislative change is long overdue.[ii] Aboriginal and Torres Strait […]
Posted on: August 9, 2017 by Emily Gould
As promised in our post last week, having looked at developments in the fight against heritage crime in the UK, we’re now turning our attention to the international context. We were considering in particular a number of interesting developments across a range of disciplines: the law, military practice, technology and community engagement. As regards the […]
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 […]