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A Universalist: Fathering Fields

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2014

Daniel Shapiro*
Affiliation:
President Emeritus, International Cultural Property Society. Email: [email protected]

Extract

I have been asked to write personally of John [Merryman]. Not of him as scholar, educator, author, nor even as father of the fields of art and cultural property law, but as the person who did these things, and more. To present an inclusive, all-embracing picture of John, the universalist, both in himself and what he has done.

First, I owe my interest, career, and whatever contributions I have made as lawyer, teacher, and writer on art and cultural property law to John. Nearly 30 years ago, as a corporate litigator and neophyte collector interested in the connection between art and law, I read Law Ethics and the Visual Arts.1 In chapters entitled “Plunder, Destruction, and Reparation” and “An Artist’s Life,” I was taken by its commitment to culture, its questions—such as, Can art be more valuable than a life?—and its overarching ethical yet concrete approach to them. I became a fledgling in the fields of art and cultural property law. A few years later I met John at a conference in Amsterdam. He became a mentor, model, and friend.

Type
Comment
Copyright
Copyright © International Cultural Property Society 2014 

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References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Merryman, John Henry. The Civil Law Tradition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1969.Google Scholar
Merryman, John Henry. “The Refrigerator of Bernard Buffet.” Hastings Law Journal 27 (1986): 1023–49.Google Scholar
Merryman, John Henry. “Thinking about the Elgin Marbles.” Michigan Law Review 83 (1985): 1880–923.Google Scholar
Merryman, John Henry. “Two Ways of Thinking about Cultural Property.” American Journal of International Law 80 (1986): 831–53.Google Scholar
Merryman, John Henry. “The Public Interest in Cultural Property.” California Law Review 77 (1989): 339–64.Google Scholar
Merryman, John Henry, and Elsen, Albert E.. Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts. 2nd edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.Google Scholar
UNIDROIT. Convention on Stolen or Illicitly Exported Cultural Objects. Rome: International Institute for the Unification of Private Law, 1995.Google Scholar