Posted on: July 7, 2016 by Alexander Herman
A little-discussed restitution of a still life by Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625) led to an important sale at Sotheby’s London last night. The work, Still Life of Flowers in a Stoneware Vase, had once belonged to Baron Alphonse von Rothschild and had been kept at his castle in Schillersdorff, Silesia (now Silherovice, Poland). A forced transfer […]
Posted on: June 22, 2016 by Emily Gould
Yesterday’s workshop on art crime at Queen Mary, University of London, which we mentioned on the blog last week, was a fascinating event, providing much food for thought. The workshop (part of an AHRC-funded series) focussed mainly on art theft, seeking to answer key questions such as: what is the prevalence of art theft internationally? […]
Posted on: April 25, 2016 by Emily Gould
The launch event for the new Museums Code of Ethics took place at the Wellcome Collection last Friday, 22nd April. You would be forgiven for thinking that a Friday afternoon event to explore an ethics code might not be the greatest crowd-puller; but on this occasion, you’d be much mistaken. Almost 150 delegates came to […]
Posted on: April 15, 2016 by Alexander Herman
Since we last reported on the matter, there have been some (potentially positive) developments on the issue of the Australian Aboriginal bark etchings in the collection of the British Museum being claimed by descendants of the Dja Dja Wurrung people who had initially made them in the mid 19th century. An article by Paul Daley in the Guardian from […]
Posted on: January 15, 2016 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
The Institute of Art & Law’s Diploma in Art Profession Law and Ethics course (DipAPLE) is set to begin next month, comprising seven monthly sessions running from February to July 2016. DipAPLE, which has been running for ten years, is an intensive and interactive course open both to lawyers and professionals from the art market or museum […]
Posted on: January 12, 2016 by Alexander Herman
As of last month, the UK has brought into force the necessary regulations to implement the 2014/60 EU Directive on the return of cultural objects unlawfully removed from the territory of a Member State. In fact, the deadline for all EU Member States to bring about this change in their national law was 18 December 2015. […]
Posted on: December 18, 2015 by Alexander Herman
British street artist “Stik”, known for painting giant stick-figure images on buildings around the world has become involved in a campaign to restitute a mural he helped create in the city of Gdansk, Poland in 2011. The mural, which features a series of 53 stick figures holding hands in celebration of the local community, was […]
Posted on: December 4, 2015 by Alexander Herman
On Wednesday, the Center for Art Law hosted an event at the Ongpin Fine Art Gallery in London to celebrate the launch of Evelien Campfens’s new book on the subject of Holocaust-era art restitution committees entitled Fair and Just Solutions? Alternatives to litigation in Nazi-looted art disputes: status quo and new developments. Campfens, who is the […]
Posted on: October 12, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Goya’s Marquesa de Santa Cruz is back in London. Those with long memories will know that this painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya had been taken out of Spain in the mid 1980s and brought to auction at Christie’s in London, only to incur the ire of the Spanish government. The work had left Spain in 1983 accompanied by forged […]
Posted on: October 2, 2015 by Alexander Herman
An art exhibition in Norway is built around a work by Henri Matisse, Blue Dress in a Yellow Armchair, and yet the work isn’t even there. The Henie Onstad Museum returned the work in March 2014 to the heirs of Paul Rosenberg, the famous Parisian art dealer whose collection of masterpieces had been looted by the Nazis […]