This article examines the rationale for restricting the international artistic patrimony. The meaning of national patrimony is analysed, and rationales for state funding and interventions in the art market are analysed in light of the nonprivate benefits that this category of art produces. Distributional concerns about the international movement of art are considered. The second part of the article provides a taxonomy of restrictions used to prevent art objects leaving a nation, namely export restrictions, import regulations, and tax policies and incentives.

Since 2000, the United Kingdom’s Spoliation Advisory Panel has provided an alternative dispute resolution mechanism for resolving disputes surrounding Nazi era dispossessions of cultural objects. This article analyzes the way in which the panel has reached its recommendations and how they have been implemented. While the panel’s recommendations provide a means of resolving disputes in circumstances where litigation might fail a claimant, claimants may encounter difficulties should an institution fail to implement the recommended remedy because of the extra-judicial nature of the recommendations. This article therefore analyzes the effectiveness of the panel’s work in overcoming some of the shortcomings of litigation and the way in which the parties have put into effect the panel’s recommendations. Furthermore, suggestions are made for ways in which to ensure compliance with the recommendations even in the absence of judicial enforcement.

The Russian Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displacedto the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territoryof the Russian Federation purports to establish the legal basisfor the Russian state to hold permanent title to the vast majority of thecultural valuables removed from Germany to the Soviet Union at the end of WorldWar II. Russia claims that the cultural objects seized by the Soviet Unionconstitute “compensatory restitution” for the hundreds ofthousands of cultural and artistic valuables seized or destroyed by the Nazisduring the war. This article assesses the compatibility of the Russian claimwith relevant international law. It does so by tracing the development of theinternational antiplunder legal regime. It then assesses the Russian claim withrespect to three categories of cultural valuables, based on prewar ownership:property belonging to private persons and organizations, property belonging tononenemy states, and property belonging to enemy states (Axis powers).“Compensatory restitution” does not exist as a category orprinciple in international law, so the analysis focuses on the legal conceptthat is most similar and therefore of potential relevance, restitution in kind.If restitution in kind is impermissible under international law, then thebroader “compensatory restitution” is, with even greaterforce, also impermissible. The key finding is that international law does notpermit “compensatory restitution,” nor does it permitunilateral seizures of cultural objects under some broader notion ofcompensation.

The looting of antiquities from archaeological sites has received widespread coverage in the media. Concerns about the loss of heritage have resulted in international multilateral and bilateral agreements intended to prevent the illicit trade in looted antiquities. China has suffered from the looting of its archaeological sites for centuries, but the problem has been exacerbated in recent years because of the increased demand for Chinese antiquities and the consequent sharp increase in market prices. China has requested international assistance to combat the illicit trade in its heritage. It is strange therefore that one of China’s special administrative regions—Hong Kong—also one of the world’s major art markets, retains a “legal absurdity,”1 which may protect the buyer of stolen or looted goods from claims for the return of stolen items. This statutory provision may result in the bizarre outcome that goods stolen from a museum or looted from an archaeological site and then purchased from a shop or market in Hong Kong may be protected from claims for their return; this protection may apply even if the loser is the Chinese state.

In the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraqi forces prosecuted a mass campaign of pillage and destruction. Under the coordinated direction of Iraqi curators who were well acquainted with Kuwait’s cultural treasures, occupying Iraqi troops plundered thousands of cultural objects from museums, libraries, and archives. Among the pillaged cultural spoils were Kuwait’s national archives, comprising the emirate’s historical memory. Until recently, Iraq was beholden to UN sanctions demanding the return of missing persons and property, including Kuwait’s archives. Although the United Nations Security Council for many years has facilitated efforts to search for the lost archives, these efforts have proved futile. This article explores the plausibility of the two most likely scenarios surrounding the cold case of Kuwait’s missing archives: 1) that the current search for the archives has overlooked the possibility that they were unknowingly seized by US forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and are currently being held by the Pentagon; and 2) that the archives may have been intentionally destroyed as part of Saddam Hussein’s aim to obliterate Kuwait’s national identity and annex the emirate as Iraq’s nineteenth province.

In 1999 a load of about sixty kilograms of ancient coins, looted from illegal excavations in Bulgaria and falsely declared, were stopped by German customs at the Frankfurt Airport, on its way to the United States. Notwithstanding any rights of ownership or administrative rights to confiscate the smuggled goods, in the end the coins were returned to the dealer. The main weakness proved to be the lack of interest in an “exotic” case like this and a lack of communication among all administrative agencies concerned.

Great efforts have been made by representatives of a multitude of countries to rectify the situation currently confronting parties, whether they be private individuals or states, that seek the return of stolen or illegally exported cultural objects. The organization UNIDROIT has been at the forefront of that effort. In June of 1995, representatives of over seventy states met in Rome and adopted the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects. The UNIDROIT Convention will enter into force as it is ratified by individual states.

The UNIDROIT Convention provides a claimant of a Contracting State with the option of using arbitration to settle its dispute. Until now, there has been little discussion of the advantages that international arbitration can bring to this domain. This article focuses on the benefits of international arbitration in facilitating the resolution of cultural property disputes. It presents an in-depth analysis of the text of the UNIDROIT Convention in the context of existing regulations in this area. It then examines three different approaches to international arbitration. These models serve to highlight the particular characteristics of this dispute resolution mechanism that make it ideally suited to cultural property disputes.

The phenomenon of antiquities smuggling is a complicated issue. The lack of official data makes it difficult to do an integrated analysis of the problem. The aim of this article is to present an accurate view of antiquities smuggling in the recent past. After gaining official permission from the Greek police, we examined 246 official arrests made by the Greek Department against Antiquities Smuggling (Athens Office) that occurred between 1999 and 2009. First and foremost, our results revealed that many arrests showed instances of fake antiquities. Moreover, it seems that there is a connection between organized crime and antiquities forgery. In addition, people with higher status are more often involved in antiquities forgery. With respect to the stolen objects, coins were by far the most preferred objects when it comes to forgery, and forgers are also using mostly bronze when it comes to these forgeries. Antiquity looting seems to have many hidden aspects, and the varied natured of antiquities smuggling requires the cooperation of a range of competent authorities and an in-depth investigation of the data, which should be based on the principles of the scientific method.

In July 2006, after 77 years at the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, the 134 year-old G'psgolox totem pole was welcomed home to Kitimaat on British Columbia's northwest coast by the Haisla First Nation. The event was important not only because it was among the first voluntary repatriations by a foreign museum of a cultural artifact to a North American aboriginal community, but also because it marked the end of a negotiation process that had been long and challenging and yet ultimately, according to the parties involved, mutually beneficial and restorative.

This discussion reviews the differences between traditional Micronesian principles regarding traditional knowledge, or ‘esoteric’ knowledge, and Western copyright laws, which have been used in the expropriation and legal alienation of traditional knowledge. We consider this conflict in relation to contemporary Native American intellectual property issues and tribal responses for the protection of such knowledge and to control research activities. This is compared with the recent international and Pacific Islands governments' concerns and actions regarding commodification and misappropriation of traditional knowledge, including the new Pacific Model Law. Finally, we review the nature of traditional knowledge in Chuuk State and its current status and recommend specific steps that the Federated States of Micronesia might take legislatively to protect traditional knowledge as part of its significant cultural heritage.

Musical instruments are central components of both the tangible and intangible heritage. However, discourse about music as intangible cultural heritage frequently overlooks the importance of instruments in conserving traditions inherited from the past and making live performance possible in the present, while curating instruments as tangible heritage often neglects their function for making music. This article explores two interrelated research questions about musical instruments as heritage. First, should instrument-crafting skills inherited from the past be sustained today, and, where industrial or mechanized manufacturing processes and the development of instruments is encouraged, what are the implications for sustaining music traditions? Second, given that instruments as crafted objects deteriorate over time, should instruments inherited from the past be displayed as objects, be restored to playing condition, or be updated and developed for contemporary use? To explore these questions, I take three case studies that juxtapose musical instruments from opposite sides of the world and from societies with very different philosophical and ideological approaches. The three case studies are Britain’s piano heritage, traditional Korean instruments (kugakki) in the Republic of Korea/South Korea, and “national” instruments (minjok akki) in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea/North Korea. Based on fieldwork, ethnography, and collecting and curating work, my choice of case studies allows me to look at both the country I call home (Britain) and the region where I have researched matters musical for 40 years (the Korean peninsula). But the case studies also demonstrate that there is no single answer to questions about the role of musical instruments when (and if) instruments are recognized as both tangible and intangible heritage.

Since the publication of the “restitution report” by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy in November 2018, the debate around the restitution of African artifacts inherited from German colonialism in German museums has become increasingly intense. While the restitution debate in Germany is generally focused on “material cultural heritage” and human remains, this reflection attempts to contextualize the “immaterial heritage” (museum collections inventory data, photographs, movies, sound recordings, and digital archive documents) from German colonialism and plead for its consideration in this debate. It claims that the first step of restitution consists of German ethnological museums being transparent about their possessions of artifacts from colonial contexts, which means providing all available information about museum collections from colonial contexts and making them easily accessible to the people from the former German colonies.

This article considers the constant tension facing several national panels in their consideration of Nazi spoliation claims concerning cultural objects. It will argue that this tension results from a shift in paradigms in dealing with Nazi-related injustices—from a strictly legal paradigm to a new victim groups-oriented paradigm, where addressing and recognizing the suffering caused by the nature of past crimes is central. While these national panels originate from this new paradigm and embody the new venues found for dealing with Nazi-looted art claims, this paradigm change at the same time presents these panels with a predicament. It seems impossible to abandon the legalist paradigm completely when remedying historical injustices in the specific category of cultural objects. Through a comparison between the Dutch and United Kingdom (UK) systems, this article will illustrate from both an institutional and substantive perspective that these panels seem to oscillate between policy-based, morality-driven proceedings (new paradigm) and a legal emphasis on individual ownership issues and restitution in kind (old paradigm). This article addresses this tension in order to provide insights on how we could conceptually approach and understand current restitution cases concerning Nazi-looted art in the Netherlands and the UK.

In July 2011 what is commonly known as the Wai 262 Report was released. After a protracted series of hearings, dating back to 1997, the New Zealand Waitangi Tribunal has at last reported on the some of the wide range of issues canvassed in those hearings. Three beautifully illustrated volumes contain a large number of recommendations in what is described as a whole-of-government report. This article notes earlier comments on Wai 262 in this journal and reframes what is often known as the ‘Maori renaissance’ from which this claim emerged in 1991. The Tribunal decided not to discuss historical aspects of the evidence presented, except for the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907, as this was not ‘an orthodox territorial claim’ allowing the Crown to negotiate with iwi for a Treaty Settlement. Of great significance for this readership, the Tribunal staunchly refused to entertain any discussion of ‘ownership’ claims to Maori cultural property. Rather, the Tribunal focussed on ‘perfecting the Treaty partnership’ between the two founding peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand. Its report is concerned with the future and with the Treaty of Waitangi when the nation has moved beyond the grievance mode that has dominated the last quarter century. The partnership principles are pragmatic and flexible. Very seldom indeed can Maori expect to regain full authority over their treasured properties and resources. The eight major topics of the chapters on intellectual property, genetic and biological resources, the environment, the conservation estate, the Maori language, Maori knowledge systems, Maori medicines and international instruments are briefly summarised. The author is critical of this Tribunal panel's timidity in refusing to make strong findings of Treaty breach as the basis for practical recommendations—the approach usually adopted in previous Tribunal reports on contemporary issues. The article then notes that the Wai 262 report featured significantly in 2012 hearings on Maori claims to proprietary rights in freshwater resources. It featured not to assist the freshwater claimants, however, but as a shield wielded by the Crown to try to deny Maori any remedy.The low bar of partnership consultations encouraged by the Wai 262 report was congenial for Crown counsel seeking to undermine Maori claims to customary rights akin to ‘ownership’ of water. The 2012 Tribunal panel, under a new Chief Judge, restrictively distinguished the Wai 262 report and found in favour of Maori rights to water. In conclusion, the article notes the irony of a government following neo-liberal policies in pursuing a privatisation strategy and yet relying on ‘commons’ rhetoric to deny Maori any enforceable rights to water; and of indigenous people arguing for ownership property rights to frustrate that government's policies.

Some countries' laws favoring good-faith purchasers over the victims of theft make it difficult to recover stolen artworks. Nonetheless, the loan of such artworks for exhibition abroad may create opportunities to utilize the host country's legal system for recovery. This article examines representative cases illustrating legal options available to plaintiffs in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the United States, laws at the federal and state level may prevent the seizure of artworks loaned for temporary exhibition, but recent cases show that immunity is not absolute and that such artworks may be subject to suit in the United States. The United Kingdom recently enacted a similar law. That law, however, has been criticized, and future interpretations by U.K. courts will be needed before its true affect can be seen. The article also discusses the backgrounds against which the U.S. and U.K. laws were enacted, illustrating the link between the laws and Russian concerns about protecting cultural artifacts that were nationalized after the Russian Revolution or taken by Soviet troops during World War II.

In light of the recent rise of destruction and looting of cultural property, a need for formalized heritage protection has arisen. Increasingly popular in the debate has become the instrument of international assistance known as “safe havens.” These temporary refuges for at-risk cultural goods in a third country have recently been implemented by Switzerland, France, the United States, and the Association of Art Museum Directors. We assess the contributions and shortcomings of these four regimes using a comparative approach. Mainly, we find that, despite variations in their scope and structure, none of the models accounts entirely for today’s major difficulties in protecting endangered cultural properties. We draw recommendations for future safe haven states against the backdrop of the existing models and hope to see the instrument used in practice as a way to safely isolate cultural property from destructive conflicts.

The conviction of Frederick Schultz is the most recent turn in a storm of controversy that began 25 years ago and does not appear to be dying down. Schultz is currently serving a prison term and owes a fine of $50,000 to the United States government. He was convicted under the National Stolen Property Act (NSPA) for conspiring to purchase Egyptian antiquities that, according to Egyptian law, were owned by the Egyptian government. The Schultz case is the latest in an emerging trend whereby the NSPA, enacted to permit criminal federal prosecution for stolen cars taken across state borders, has been applied to help foreign governments with national ownership laws to keep antiquities within their borders.