Shockwaves echoed through the media and the arts community when the Delaware Art Museum chose to deaccession pieces from its collection and when the public learned that the Detroit Institute of Arts might be forced to do the same. Further concern arose when financial troubles compelled the Corcoran Gallery of Art to merge with the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. An examination of the climate and legal battles surrounding these events shows how these institutions chose to cope with the financial adversity that put their collections at risk and illustrates the precarious position of works in a museum’s collection when that museum experiences financial distress. This article explores the ethical, judicial, and legislative frameworks currently governing deaccessioning and ultimately advocates for new legislative solutions to guide the deaccession process in order to provide the opportunity to maintain these works in the public sphere.

Because of their status of res nullius—owned by no one—property theory is underdeveloped in regard to wildlife. In this article, wildlife is seen to be sometimes subject to a shadow ownership by class interests in society. Hunters accuse protected wolves of being the “pets” or “property” of an urban-based conservationist middle class. This phenomenon fragments the common fauna and undermines responsibility taking and policy compliance for wildlife that is seen as being owned by an oppositional social class. Using an empirical case study of Swedish hunters, we show how responsibility for wildlife has become entangled with property rights. A historical materialist analysis reveals that hunters once experienced ownership of wildlife by the nobility as co-opting state coercive power. Today, however, aristocracy is replaced by a new elite class of conservationists. Noting the hunters’ tendency to evoke quasi-aristocratic virtues of ownership, we advance recommendations for an alternative approach. We appeal to deliberative democracy to promote the “communing” of wildlife across classes in fora that withstand co-optation by class interests.

Pre-Columbian antiquities, particularly those from the Maya region, are highly sought after on the international art market. Large auction houses such as Sotheby’s have dedicated pre-Columbian departments and annual auctions, for which sales catalogues are created. These catalogues offer insight into market trends and allow the volume of antiquities being bought and sold to be monitored. The following study records the public sale of Maya antiquities at Sotheby’s over a period slightly exceeding 50 years from 1963 to 2016. More than 3,500 artifacts were offered for sale during this period, of which more than 80 percent did not have associated provenance information. The data suggests that the volume of Maya antiquities offered for sale at Sotheby’s public auctions have been steadily decreasing since the 1980s, but their relative value has increased. Quantitative studies of auction sales such as this one can be useful in monitoring the market for illegal antiquities and forgeries.

This article concerns the case of a stolen 1,000-year-old Buddhist mummy, known as the statue of Zhanggong-zushi, which caught the attention of the international community. The statue of Zhanggong-zushi is the embodiment of God in the eyes of the locals, and the treatment of human remains is controversial and sensitive. This case opens a discussion as to how Western courts should consider religious interests in the disputes of stolen cultural property. It is very important for the art world to understand how locals feel about the loss of their culture or religion.