Efforts to protect, if not revitalize, intangible cultural heritage in its traditional communities, cannot succeed without due attention to issues of ownership—cultural, environmental, intellectual, economic … “intellectual property” categories in a wisdom system such as that of the Baul of Bengal show that Traditional Knowledge, Customary Law and Traditional Cultural Expressions are inseparable “property,” and that “ownership” should be understood on traditional terms. Within such an integrated continuum, knowledge itself is not limited to it modern meaning.

Is it possible to bring about a true and equitable dialogue between radically antagonistic intellectual property universes—the modern one driven by profit, and traditional ones rooted in complex systems of multiple values?

Religion has inspired the creation of art throughout human history. Most religious works of art are not considered to be sacred objects. Instead, these works serve to express religious ideas, values or feelings. Some works of art are, however, considered sacred objects. While art museums are secular institutions, the acquisition, handling, treatment, and interpretation of works of art deemed to be sacred objects may warrant special consideration since these works possess multiple purposes as works of art and sacred objects.

This article examines the different meanings that rights to land and culture hold in San Basilio de Palenque, an Afro-Colombian community whose “cultural space” was declared by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to be intangible cultural heritage of humanity in 2005. I investigate how the language of rights—both communal and individual—operates simultaneously at various registers and is strategically put to work in distinct political spheres. Drawing from ethnographic field research conducted between 2009 and 2013, I argue that while communal rights are invoked to garner recognition from state and transnational organizations like UNESCO, individual rights, conceived as exclusive prerogatives, serve to mark hierarchical distinctions between community members. I examine the paradoxical coexistence of two contradictory claims: one of cultural cohesion and another of social hierarchy. I conclude by questioning how a more nuanced examination of rights discourses in Palenque might contribute to understanding the multiple meanings of rights, not simply across time or space but also in relation to their perceived strategic purpose.

It is notoriously difficult to design and attach suitable legal rights to intangible cultural heritage (ICH), due to its nature as an evolving, living heritage. This article investigates the effects of government intervention relating to Scottish tartan in order to trace the relationship between formal proprietary rights, commodification, and cultural branding. The article proceeds in three steps: from (1) the historical context of the Jacobite rebellion and the subsequent Victorian assignment of the tartan to clans; to (2) the formation and function of the subsequent self-regulating community tartan registers; and (3) the 2009 governmental intervention with the establishment of a governmental tartan register, subsuming the community groups’ role in self-regulating tartan. While past ICH protection efforts have focused primarily on developing countries, the example of tartan raises wider concerns about the social and economic impact of the subtle erosion or, conversely, the ossification of living heritages. Finally, some alternatives are considered within the IP regime, such as sui generis protection, while highlighting the challenges of reconciling the domestic regulation of diverse ICH.

In 1940, the British Admiralty detained a British passenger ship sailing from Lisbon to New York at the port of Hamilton, Bermuda, for a contraband search. Customs authorities seized four crates containing hundreds of artworks by leading European artists. Suspected of being sent to New York for sale by the French art dealer Martin Fabiani for the economic benefit of German-occupied France, the captured collection—originally the property of art dealer Ambroise Vollard—was confiscated as a prize of war and sent to Ottawa, Canada, for wartime safekeeping. The National Gallery of Canada stored the collection from 1940 to 1949, when British courts instructed the collection’s Canadian custodian to release it to its rightful owners, Fabiani and the Vollard heirs. This essay reframes the wartime journey of the Vollard-Fabiani collection and challenges the long-held notion that it belongs to the narrative of Nazi-looted cultural property. This essay also highlights an important role played by the National Gallery of Canada during World War II.

Even now in 2006, sixty years after the end of World War II, the subject of cultural assets seized under Nazi persecution (“looted art”) and displaced during the war (“trophy art”), continues to be of interest to politicians, historians, legal experts, and many others. Thus, at a meeting in January 2005, Germany's Advisory Commission for the return of cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution, particularly those cultural assets removed from Jewish ownership, recommended the return of four paintings presently in the possession of the Federal Republic of Germany to the community of heirs of Julius Freund. Also in January 2005, Germany's government, all federal states and central organizations of municipalities called on German public bodies not to slow down in their search for cultural assets seized as a result of Nazi persecution and to report any items found to the Koordinierungsstelle für Kulturgutverluste (Coordination Office for Lost Cultural Assets) for display as part of its Internet database www.lostart.de. Furthermore, in February 2005, Franz von Lenbach's painting “Prinzessin zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn” which had been seized by the Nazis was identified through www.lostart.de and returned to the heirs of Bernhard Altmann. The painting was part of the Remaining Stock CCP (“Linzer Liste”) within www.lostart.de enlisting cultural objects with provenance gaps in the administration of Germany's Bundesamt zur Regelung offener Vermögensfragen (Federal Office for the settlement of ownership issues). The object was on loan from the Bundesamt and in possession of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Köln (Germany).

Displaced and nationalized cultural property remains hidden in the vast holdings of museums, libraries, and archives around the world. Some governments holding these “trophies” of war and conquest refuse to return such cultural treasures to their rightful owners even when their provenance has been identified. They assert that the collections were obtained through expropriation and nationalization, and that divestiture of a museum, library, or archive would jeopardize the existence of these institutions and cause societal discord.

This article discusses the struggle of an orthodox Jewish organization to recover from the Russian Federation a collection of sacred, irreplaceable books and manuscripts seized in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and during World War II. The story of Agudas Chasidei Chabad's efforts to recover these core religious texts of its spiritual leaders has involved appeals by U.S. presidents, congress, and the U.S. Helsinki Commission, as well as lawsuits in the Soviet Union/Russia and United States.

After prolonged litigation in the United States, a federal court of appeals in Washington DC ruled in 2008 that American courts have jurisdiction over Chabad's suit against the Russian Federation to recover its religious texts. This ruling may pave the way for the resolution of this dispute and also lead to the filing of other suits in American courts seeking to recover looted cultural property, even if that property is located outside U.S. borders.

Rescue has long been a defense for the removal of cultural property. Since the explosion of iconoclasm in West Asia, North Africa, and West Africa, there has been a growing demand for cultural property in danger zones to be “rescued” by being purchased and given “asylum” in “safe zones” (typically, in the market countries of Western Europe and North America). This article reviews evidence from natural experiments with the “rescue” of looted antiquities and stolen artifacts from across Asia and Europe. Unsurprisingly, the evidence reaffirms that “rescue” incentivizes looting, smuggling, and corruption, as well as forgery, and the accompanying destruction of knowledge. More significantly, “rescue” facilitates the laundering of “ordinary” illicit assets and may contribute to revenue streams of criminal organizations and violent political organizations; it may even weaken international support for insecure democracies. Ultimately, “rescue” by purchase appears incoherent, counter-productive, and dangerous for the victimized communities that it purports to support.

Cultural property goes back a long way. It is probably fair to say that it originated with the beginnings of human creation, the earliest material and intellectual expressions of mankind. And as soon as there was cultural property, there likely was dispute, although in a most primitive form. The destruction, supplanting, and taking of another group's cultural creations may not unreasonably be thought of as the earliest form of cultural property debate.

The Koenigs Collection of Old Master drawings was transferred during the course of World War II from private ownership to the German government. Most of the collection recently appeared in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The author examines the validity of these transfers and the proper ownership of the collection today from both a public and private international law perspective. The dispute as to ownership between Russia and the Netherlands and the role of the German government is a difficult one to resolve, particularly in light of current claims for war reparations and recent developments in international law concerning the transfer of cultural property.

The Institute for Archaeological Studies of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, organized a conference on legal issues concerning archaeology and theft of antiquities. This meeting was stimulated by the German statute (Kulturgüterrückgabegesetz version of May 18, 2007) implementing the UNESCO convention of November 14, 1970, the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. Archaeologists are afraid that the new legal regime might encourage thieves and art dealers to localize their activities in Germany. Michael Müller-Karpe of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz, Germany, articulated these fears. Five reports on tomb robbery in Africa (Peter Breunig), Europe (Rüdiger Krause), Mediterranean countries (Hans-Markus von Kaenel, Wulf Raeck), and the Near East (Jan-Waalke Meyer) gave a bleak picture of contemporary dangers to archaeological sites and archaeological objects. Kurt Siehr gave the paper, “Legal Aspects of the Protection of Cultural Property,” stressing that the ratification and implementation of the 1970 UNESCO convention will improve the protection of cultural property in Germany. However, he also emphasized that the implementing statute could have provided stronger measures: Germany should ratify the UNIDROIT Convention of June 24, 1995, on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects as already urged by most German archaeologists and museums.