Posted on: April 15, 2024 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
The April issue of 2024 Art Antiquity and Law has gone to press: hard copies will be posted out to subscribers next week, and for digital subscribers, the online version should be available via Hein very soon. This issue contains an article by Achilleas Iasonos (Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Earth and Ocean Lab, Department of […]
Posted on: March 25, 2024 by Charlotte Woodhead
The “legislative prison walls” of the British Museum Act In 2022, the then UK Prime Minister (the antepenultimate Prime Minister of recent times) responded to calls for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece by saying that it is for the trustees to decide. However, even if the trustees considered it appropriate to return […]
Posted on: January 17, 2024 by Nicholas M. O'Donnell
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled on 9 January, 2024 that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection (TBC) Foundation in Madrid is the owner of Rue Saint–Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie by Camille Pissarro, a painting sold by German Jew Lilly Cassirer under Nazi duress. After the Cassirer family prevailed in the Supreme Court in […]
Posted on: May 5, 2023 by Lilian Palmer
The UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel, which handles claims relating to lost possession of cultural property during the Nazi era, has not published a new report in seven years. As such, their most recent recommendation, published on 28 March 2023, is particularly worthy of note. The Panel has recommended that a landscape painting by leading French […]
Posted on: September 12, 2022 by Stephanie Drawdy
Heirs of German Jewish dealers who seek restitution of a collection of Christian reliquaries known as the Welfenschatz (or Guelph Treasure) have received a stinging dismissal of their suit from a Washington D.C. district court. The case made headlines in 2021 after it was remanded by the U.S. Supreme Court to the D.C. Circuit for […]
Posted on: August 22, 2022 by Stephanie Drawdy
From the Adirondacks to the Lower East Side, New York museums face a new legal requirement for their collections – a measure of candor about objects traded during Hitler’s terror reign. On 10 August 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a multi-faceted package of legislation “aimed at honoring and supporting Holocaust survivors”. Effective immediately, […]
Posted on: April 25, 2022 by Stephanie Drawdy
The seventeen-year title dispute over a Parisian winter streetscape by Camille Pissarro has now tilted in favor of the heirs whose German-Jewish ancestor was forced to part with the masterwork during the Holocaust. On 21 April 2022, the United States Supreme Court unanimously vacated a judgment by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that had […]
Posted on: February 4, 2022 by Alexander Herman
On Wednesday evening, I spoke on an online panel organised by the Universities of Bonn and Tel Aviv entitled The Return of Beauty: Restitution of Nazi-Looted Art in Comparative Perspectives. I was asked to introduce the topic of ‘post-colonial’ claims for the return of cultural objects as a point of comparison with claims for the […]
Posted on: January 19, 2022 by Stephanie Drawdy
For just over one hour on Tuesday 18th January, the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument centered on procedural issues that will decide the next steps in the protracted case involving a Camille Pissarro masterwork.[1] The painting, Rue Saint-Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie, is currently held by Spain in its Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo […]
Posted on: February 12, 2021 by Stephanie Drawdy
The much-anticipated ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in the Welfenschatz (or ‘Guelph Treasure’) restitution case (previously discussed here) was issued on 3 February 2021, rendering precedent on the interpretation of the ‘expropriation exception’ of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA).[1] Enacted to lift the “baseline presumption of immunity” given to foreign states under the […]