art, heritage, & law
Lauren Jean Bradberry, a third year law student at Louisiana State has a comment in volume 76 of the Louisiana Law Review examining the scope of copyright protection for architecture. It offers an interesting read, so long as you can forgive the puns we lawyers seem to love.
From the introduction:
Continue reading “Comment on Copyright Protections for Architecture”
This week at the ICC the trial of Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi began. He stands accused of directing the destruction of medieval tombs and a mosque, all world heritage sites, and all a part of Timbuktu’s 15th century heritage. Owen Bowcott reports for the Gaurdian that:
No Taliban or al-Qaida leader was charged with the destruction of Afghanistan’s sixth-century Bamiyan Buddhas, which were dynamited in 2001. Khmer Rouge genocide trials did not deal with the looting of Cambodia’s Hindu temples. Nor have Islamic State leaders been indicted for destroying Assyrian statues from Nineveh or razing Roman ruins in Palmyra.
The damage inflicted on Timbuktu, known as “the city of 333 saints”, followed the rebellion of al-Qaida-inspired Tuareg militias, armed with weapons from Libya, in the central African state in 2012.
Faqi, a local ethnic Tuareg, is said to have been a member of Ansar Dine and the head of Hesbah, known as the Manners’ Brigade, which considered the mausoleums – built to pay homage to deceased saints – to be blasphemous.
He is accused of directing attacks on 10 ancient mud-brick buildings in June 2012 and July 2012. One of the desecrated sites was the Sidi Yahya mosque, built in 1440 when Timbuktu was a regional centre for learning. It contained Prof Sidi Yahya’s mausoleum.
Continue reading “The Timbuktu Destruction Prosecution Begins”
Best of luck to the teams competing this weekend at the national cultural heritage moot court competition in Chicago. The competition is run by DePaul’s moot court society and the Lawyer’s Committee for Cultural Heritage Competition.
Given that 2016 marks the 200th anniversary of Parliament’s decision to purchase the sculptures from Lord Elgin, it is apt that this years problems deals with two issues over whether a U.S. Court would have jurisdiction and should hear a suit between the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum.
Co-sponsored by the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation, the National Cultural Heritage Law Moot Court Competition is the only moot court competition in the world that focuses exclusively on cultural heritage law issues. The Competition provides students with the opportunity to advocate in the nuanced landscape of cultural heritage, which addresses our past and our identity, and which has frequently become the subject of contentious legal debates and policies. This dynamic and growing legal field deals with the issues that arise as our society comes to appreciate the important symbolic, historical and emotional role that cultural heritage plays in our lives. It encompasses several disparate areas: protection of archaeological sites; preservation of historic structures and the built environment; preservation of and respect for both tangible and intangible indigenous cultural heritage; the international market in art works and antiquities; and recovery of stolen art works.
An Athenian cultural association has brought a claim before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg seeking the return of the Parthenon Sculptures held by the British Museum. This year marks the 200th anniversary of Parliament’s decision to purchase sculptures stripped from the Parthenon from Lord Elgin. At present most of the surviving sculptures rest in London at the British Museum.
Alexander Herman for the Institute of Art & Law blog summarizes the allegations:
The claim is aimed at the United Kingdom and alleges violations of the following rights under the European Convention on Human Rights:
cultural identity as an aspect of «the right to respect for private life» (Article 8 of ECHR);
cultural identity as an aspect of «the freedom of conscience» (Article 9 of ECHR);
the right to access cultural information, as an aspect of «the freedom of expression» (Article 10 of ECHR);
the «right to an effective remedy» (Article 13 of ECHR); and
the right to property, in the sense of integral public access to the monument (Article 1 of the Additional Protocol to ECHR).
The Athenians’ Association, which has existed since 1895, argues in a statement that it hopes to “raise international public awareness and to have justice rendered” and “hopes that the truth will prevail, that the monument will be restored and that history and tradition will shine forth for the good of mankind”.
I’ve laid out my argument as well, that cultural justice demands the reunification of this work of art.
Good news for those who want to encourage museums to thoroughly examine their collections. The National Gallery of Australia has determined that 22 antiquities from Asia have “insufficient or questionable provenance documentation.”
Chasing Aphrodite has a comprehensive roundup, including the dealers and collectors who had possession of these objects:
Continue reading “Will Internal Audits be the New Norm for Museums?”
The artist Banksy creates valuable works of art, but he places them without permission, and this often raises property disputes. Peter Salib, a JD candidate at the University of Chicago has posted a draft of “The Law of Banksy: Who Owns Street Art?” It is an interesting examination of the problem, though comparative lawyers and those outside the United States may share my frustration that though the author uses as an example the dispute between a Boys’ Club in Bristol, and the Bristol City Council, and an artist who works frequently in the United Kingdom and all over the world, insists on focusing almost exclusively on American law.
From the abstract:
Street Art — generally, art that is produced on private property not owned by the artist and without permission — has entered the mainstream. Works by such artists as Banksy, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Shepard Fairey now sell at the world’s most prestigious auction houses, fetching prices in the millions. Strangely, however, the law governing street art ownership is entirely undeveloped. The circumstances of street art’s creation — often involving artists’ clandestine application of their work to the sides of buildings owned by others — render traditional legal paradigms governing ownership intractable. If Banksy paints a valuable mural on the side of my house, who owns it? Me? Banksy? Someone else? American law is currently ill-equipped to answer the question.
This article rigorously investigates the problem of street art ownership. It accounts for the unusual circumstances of street art creation and distribution. It then considers the possible legal regimes for governing street art ownership and comes to a surprising recommendation.
Melanie Gerlis reports for the Art Loss Newspaper on a competition claim filed against the Art Loss Register. The claim was filed by Chris Marinello, founder of the Art Recovery Group, and former employee of the Art Loss Register:
ARG’s letter to the competition authority accuses ALR of “systemic breaches of competition law”, citing seven examples of “abusive behaviour”. ALR, according to the letter, “is implementing a persistent, pervasive and systematic plan to eliminate ARG fr om the market”.
Heading the list of complaints is what ARG describes as “vexatious litigation”, a reference to a civil claim that ALR took to the UK’s High Court in July. This claim accuses Marinello and others of “the unlawful establishment and operation” of ARG, citing breach of contract, breach of confidence and “infringement of database rights”, among other things. ALR’s claim demands the handover of any confidential information the defendants may have that belongs to ALR.
Marinello and the other defendants filed a counterclaim in November, in which “each and every allegation contained in the particulars of claim is denied”. A subsequent reply and defence was lodged by ALR in December, which also denied all allegations.
James Ratcliffe, ALR’s director of recoveries, lawyer and near-namesake of the company’s founder, says that, while he has not seen ARG’s letter to the competition authority, ALR’s legal actions are “certainly not vexatious” and that there is “no systematic plan” to eliminate its competitor. He says the claim had to be issued to protect the interests of ALR’s stakeholders because Marinello “took confidential information from our business and we don’t know the full extent of it”.
Marinello says: “The ALR knows exactly the extent of information in my possession because it was obtained openly, transparently and with express permission pursuant to an agreement signed by Julian Radcliffe in 2012.”
Julian Radcliffe is ALR’s majority shareholder, although Sotheby’s also has a stake (around 11%), as does Christie’s (around 3%), and Marinello himself (10%).
Both companies are positioned to fill an important function in the art market, and to help recover lost and stolen works of art. Hopefully they can find a way forward to coexist.
One of the powerful symbols of the gulf separating museums and source communities are the fragments of sculpture which populate so many galleries. It is the best interest of these museums and the source communities to cooperate when possible, which makes the news from Cambodia welcome.
This 7th-century Khmer head has been in the possession of the Museé Guimet for almost 130 years. But now the Art Newspaper reports the statue and the rest of the statue will be reunited:
The head, which has been in the Musée Guimet’s collection since 1889, will remain in Cambodia for the next five years, says the museum curator Thierry Zéphir. It will be reattached to the decapitated body of Harihara, which the National Museum of Cambodia acquired in 1944, after the museum’s conservation team—led by Bertrand Porte of the French School of Asian Studies—confirmed they were a match.
The head was discovered in the late 19th century in a ruined temple at Phnom Da by Etienne Aymonier, a French colonial administrator and the first archaeologist to survey the remains of the Khmer empire. The Lyon industrialist Emile Guimet acquired the fragment, along with other Cambodian artefacts shipped to France for the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris, for his ambitious new museum dedicated to the religions of the Far East.
The head of the Harihara statue, which represents the combined gods Vishnu and Shiva, will be on display to the public at the Cambodian national museum today.
This summer I’m slated to teach a two hour credit course on International Cultural Heritage Law in Malta through South Texas’ Malta program, alongside courses in Comparative Tax; and Democracy, Politics and Courts.
More information is available here.
Here’s my course description:
The course will examine the intersection between law and material cultural heritage. It will show how domestic and international law works to resolve disputes over ancient sites, works of art, and antiquities. A particular emphasis will also be the legal instruments which prohibit the intentional destruction and wholescale looting of ancient culture. We will examine international conventions, domestic laws, and analyze the prominent cases which have arisen over cultural heritage disputes.
If you are a law student interested in summer study opportunities, I hope you’ll consider it.
The excellent Art-Law Centre has announced its call for papers for its “All Art and Cultural Heritage Law Conference” to be held in June 2016 in Geneva.
From the call:
This conference will host two panels: ‘Cultural Heritage in the Crossfire: Reality and Effectiveness of Protection Efforts’ and ‘Art and Cultural Heritage: What Is the Role for Ethics?’. The aim of the conference is to take stock of, and to further contribute to the recent discussions regarding the protection of cultural heritage from damage and the role of ethics in the art world. In particular, the Art-Law Centre is interested in papers pursuing normative, empirical, comparative or theoretical approaches. We welcome contributions from law and other disciplines, including philosophy, criminology, archaeology and history.
…
Paper proposals should be emailed to the Art-Law Centre’s team at art-adr@unige.ch by 29 February 2016. Successful applicants will be notified by 14 March 2016, and would be required to submit a summary of their presentation by 23 May 2016.