In April of 2003 the collection of André Breton, one of the founders of Surrealism, was auctioned off at the Hôtel Druout in Paris. This article focuses on how the sale sparked a heated debate about the French state's role as the protector of French cultural patrimony and looks at the different interests involved, from Breton's daughter, who authorised the sale, to the Minister of Culture. Ultimately, the author argues that the state allowed the sale to occur, despite popular protest, in order to improve France's position in the global art market.

Significant documents of record recently produced and dealing with cultural property, heritage and related issues will be printed annually in the final issue (No. 4) of each numbered volume. Documents considered for publication may be national, regional, or international instruments and codes. Inquiries or suggestions regarding documentary materials may be addressed to the Chronicles Editor, Kurt Siehr, at 〈[email protected]〉 or the Editor, Alexander Bauer, at 〈[email protected]〉.

This article problematizes the process of heritage declaration using ethnographic research on the working class carnival produced each year in the historic city center of Puebla, México. The author explores the ways in which the intersection of cultural and political practice in this case has not only called into question the authenticity of certain aspects of this local tradition, but have instead converted them into points of contention among carnival producers.

The failure to agree on the treatment of audiovisual products in the Uruguay Round led to an unsatisfactory result for all World Trade Organization (WTO) members. Yet a balanced evaluation of the arguments on both sides demonstrates that the stalemate need not continue indefinitely. The audiovisual industry is a business, but audiovisual products have cultural features that distinguish them from other tradeable goods and services. If members see local audiovisual products as a means of communication among their people, or if they do not wish to stifle creativity, free speech, or the progressive development of culture, they may need to support local audiovisual products in a manner that discriminates expressly against foreign products. The same cannot be said of discrimination between foreign audiovisual products. If a member wishes to extend benefits to audiovisual products from countries with cultures similar to its own, it can do so by adopting objective criteria, such as language to distinguish between the relevant products. Cultural policy measures in relation to audiovisual products should be the least trade-restrictive necessary to achieve their objectives.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: For helpful comments on an earlier version of this article, I thank Dr. Roger O'Keefe, Justin Fung, Alison Lam, Dr. Andrew Mitchell, Matthew Stilwell, and anonymous referees. All errors and omissions, as well as the opinions expressed here, are mine.

In recent years an increasing number of state-based heritage protection schemes have asserted ownership over traditional medical knowledge (TMK) through various forms of cultural documentation such as archives, databases, texts, and inventories. Drawing on a close reading of cultural disputes over a single system of TMK—the classical South Asian medical tradition of Ayurveda—the paper traces some of the problems, ambiguities, and paradoxes of making heritage legible. The focus is on three recent state practices by the Indian government to protect Ayurvedic knowledge, each revolving around the production of a different cultural object: the translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch botanical text; the creation of an electronic database known as the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL); and the discovery of an Ayurvedic drug as part of a bioprospecting benefit-sharing scheme. Examined together, they demonstrate that neither TMK, nor Ayurveda, nor even the process of cultural documentation can be treated as monoliths in heritage practice. They also reveal some complexities of heritage protection on the ground and the unintended consequences that policy imperatives and legibility set into motion. As the paper shows, state-based heritage protection schemes inspire surprising counterresponses by indigenous groups that challenge important assumptions about the ownership of TMK, such as locality, community, commensurability, and representation.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: My grateful thanks first to Vijayendra Rao and Gayatri Reddy for invaluable discussion and intellectual support; Debra Diamond, Jane Anderson, Lalitha Gopalan, Michael Sappol, Alexander Bauer, and two anonymous referees for extremely useful interdisciplinary insights; and to the Rockefeller Foundation and the Smithsonian's Center of Folklife and Cultural Heritage, particularly Richard Kurin, Carla Borden, James Early, and Peter Seitel, for the ideal fellowship and venue to get this paper written.

This paper explores access to the Honduran past with a focus on northwestern Honduras, particularly the Ulua Valley. The foundations of national patrimony legislation and the practice of collecting antiquities are used to explore whether the disassociation of the archaeological community from the collecting sphere over the last several decades has better protected the archaeological record. I argue that early field expeditions led by U.S. archaeologists, the shipment of their finds to U.S. institutions, and subsequent massive looting galvanized Honduran efforts aimed at national patrimony legislation. The roles of the U.S. government and U.S.-based businesses as negotiating bodies in the early days of Honduran expeditions from 1890 to 1940 are explored in detail, particularly in the sphere of opening up the region to collectors and the role of the U.S. antiquities market. We can understand the early days of collecting in Honduras precisely because of the close relationships once forged between collectors, museums, and archaeologists, networks that have now disappeared because of current conceptions of archaeological ethics. The changing definition of a collector represents a key point throughout this analysis; at one time archaeologists, museums, and businesses were the primary collectors. The shift from the label collector to archaeologist is explored through the lens of the development of archaeology as a discipline, with a particular emphasis on context, and the contemporary legislative efforts aimed at cultural heritage projection. The essay concludes with a look at recent archaeological work in the region and the increasingly strict cultural patrimony legislation, specifically the 2004 U.S.–Honduran Memorandum of Understanding.

The cornerstone of ICOM is the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums. It sets minimum standards of professional practice and performance for museums and their staff. In joining the organisation, ICOM members undertake to abide by this Code.

Recent developments in U.S. case law have strengthened the power of private individuals to sue foreign sovereigns in U.S. courts over claims for artwork and cultural heritage property. Traditionally, however, the U.S. government granted a large amount of deference to foreign sovereigns regarding ownership rights in such property. Principles such as grace and comity with other nations, respect for cultural heritage property ownership, and increasing public access to art are reflected in U.S. legislation. For example, the adoption of the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CPIA), the Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA), and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) all demonstrate a strong position held by the United States to recognize and protect ownership rights in cultural heritage property.

This article examines the international legal regime that governs cultural commodities by providing an up-to-date stocktaking in the field. In doing so, this paper focuses on the music industry, both as the general backdrop and as a context in which to observe the evolution of the current regulatory regime. It includes a review of the history of the commoditization process of musical goods, the requisite legislative and judicial decisions, the international regulatory environment, and a tripartite case study. By reviewing various approaches and examining several recent arenas where the issues have been implicated, the author demonstrates that, in its current form, the international copyright regime is not sufficiently supportive of diversity in cultural property.

Conscious that cultural material forms a part of the world heritage and should be cherished and preserved for the benefit of all;

The practice of yoga outside India and for commercial exchange (transnational commercial yoga) is a multibillion-dollar industry that has been the site of increasing formal regulation. The primary questions these regulations are meant to resolve include the following: (1) What is yoga? (2) What is its proprietary nature? and (3) Who has the right to manage its expression? Two recent U.S. federal district court cases involving the Bikram Yoga College of India, a yoga franchise based in Los Angeles, have drawn international attention to the debate on whether yogic knowledge or practice resides in the public or private domain. This article asks, if given the monetary value at stake, did the global market for transnational commercial yoga set the stage for claims to individual IPRs? Furthermore, this article analyzes how yoga, due to its unique characteristics as an embodied practice and intangible form, serves as a platform for experimentation from which new meanings of open source, IPRs, and information management strategies emerge.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I would like to thank the Department of Anthropology, the School of Social Sciences, and the Center for Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, for their funding support.

The return of 13 classical antiquities from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) to Italy provides a glimpse into a major museum's acquisition patterns from 1971 to 1999. Evidence emerging during the trial of Marion True and Robert E. Hecht Jr. in Rome is allowing the Italian authorities to identify antiquities that have been removed from their archaeological contexts by illicit digging. Key dealers and galleries are identified, and with them other objects that have followed the same route. The fabrication of old collections to hide the recent surfacing of antiquities is also explored.ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The authors are grateful to the following for their assistance during the writing of this paper: Malcolm Bell, Ann Copeland (La Trobe University), Tracey Cullen, Colin Hope (Monash University), Andrew Jamieson (University of Melbourne), Ian MacPhee (La Trobe University), Jessica Powers (San Antonio Museum of Art), Sonia Puttock (University of Queensland), Peter Watson, and Karol Wight (The J. Paul Getty Museum).

To draw on recent developments and find ways to break the deadlocks that have stymied discussions on cultural property and heritage, the International Cultural Property Society organized the conference, “What Heritage to Preserve?” held at the Pocantico Conference Center of the Rockefeller Brother's Fund from October 19 to 21, 2005.

Thanking the Ministry of Tourism and Culture of the Republic of Albania and the UNESCO Venice Office, BRESCE, for the successful organization of this Meeting

This article presents a more human, dynamic, and holistic perspective of cultural heritage, closely referring to the currently observed changes in its conceptual development. It argues that the conceptual focus of cultural heritage has shifted alongside three interrelated and complementary directions: 1) from monuments to people; 2) from objects to functions; and thus 3) from preservation per se to purposeful preservation, sustainable use, and development. The reappearing and alive functional heritage is discussed as opposed to the objectified, glass-covered, and frozen heritage of the past by referring to both practical and theoretical heritage domains. Conclusions are drawn in favor of an adequate reexamination and readaptation of the conceptual framework of cultural heritage, based on accepting its new functional socioeconomic dimension and integrating multiple perspectives from a variety of academic fields.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I would like to thank Alexander Bauer and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments on this article.

On June 1, 2005, the Swiss Federal Act on the International Transfer of Cultural Property (Cultural Property Transfer Act [CPTA]) and the regulations thereof became effective. The CPTA implements the minimal standards of the UNESCO Convention of 1970 on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The CPTA fills a gap, because Switzerland is not a member state of the Convention of June 24, 1995, on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects (Unidroit Convention 1995). In addition, as a nonmember state of the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Community (EEC), the Council Directive 93/7/EEC of March 15, 1993, on the Return of Cultural Objects Unlawfully Removed from the Territory of a Member State is not applicable. The CPTA enforces foreign export bans in Switzerland. However, claims in Switzerland for return of foreign, illegally exported cultural property are only successful when there is an agreement on the import and return of cultural property between Switzerland and the claiming foreign state. Like Switzerland, the claiming state must be a member state of the UNESCO Convention of 1970.

Vincent Noce, La Collection Egoiste (The Selfish Collector) pp. 328. J. C. Lattès, Paris, 2005. ISBN 2-7096-241-9.

Few people who follow cases relating to the illicit trade can have missed the celebrated case of Stéfane Breitwieser, the Alsatian misfit who stole, over a period of 8 or so years, hundreds of objects from museums and churches to squirrel away in his attic rooms, or that of his mother Mireille Stengel, who destroyed almost all of it by disposal in the family garbage bin or by throwing it into a canal. This book, however, shows just how much a dedicated investigative journalist can add to the record, details that are not only useful in trying to understand the mentality of Breitwieser (by no means an isolated case as this account shows) and even more useful in showing the loopholes in the investigations, the lack of coordination between countries, and the sheer ineptitude of many institutions in securing their collections. Noce, editor of the cultural section of the French newspaper Libération, has joined the select company of Karl Meyer (articles in the New York Times) and Peter Watson who have added greatly to our knowledge of how the illicit trade works. French journalists, too, are greatly helping expose the unsavory details of these activities (see Noce's previous book Descente aux Enchères and that of Emmanuel de Roux and Roland-Pierre Paringaud, Razzia sur L'art).

The field of cultural property or heritage, as it appears to an outsider, is bedeviled by different, perhaps contradictory fundamental values and structuring metaphors, on one hand, and by large practical problems of enforcement and unintended consequence, on the other. I am an outsider to the field. I was asked to write a report with the hope that I might be able to provide a different perspective precisely because I am not a practitioner. I am taking it on faith that my lack of authority is, for the purposes of this essay, authoritative. I will focus on questions that seem important to me and suggest some answers that seem reasonable to me. I leave it in the hands of the readers to decide whether the exercise serves any purpose for them.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. Peter Turner is a doctoral student in Classics at Princeton University.

Dugong v. Rumsfeld, a case charging the United States Department of Defense with violation of Section 402 of the U.S. National Historic Preservation Act, highlights the cultural importance of animals and the value of addressing this kind of significance in the intepretation of natural and cultural heritage legislation on both national and international levels.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I am grateful to Caleb W. Christopher of the Pace University School of Law for involving me in Dugong and for many helpful comments on the analysis presented here. Mr. Christopher points out that there are many other aspects of law, both domestic and international, that could be explored through analysis of Dugong, as well as philosophical and policy questions about the unity or segmentation of natural and cultural resource management systems. At the same time, he cautions that the case is not yet definitively resolved; the U.S. military may yet regroup and launch another assault on the beleaguered sea mammals. I look forward to an extended and updated analysis of the case by Mr. Christopher in the not-too-distant future. I am also grateful to Earthjustice San Francisco for assistance and advice, and to Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority for permission to use the dugong image included in this article.

The Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA) has existed as an Affiliated Organisation of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1998. PIMA and its members fully endorse and support the ICOM Code of Ethics. In addition, PIMA is proud to produce this specialised code for professional museum work particularly adapted to the values of Pacific Islands Museums and Cultural Centres.Please Note: This Code of Ethics was developed during a special session of the Pacific Museums in Sustainable Heritage Development Workshop, held at the Australian National University in Canberra during February 2006. The facilitation was expertly co-chaired by PIMA Executive Board Members, Lawrence Foana'ota (Director, Solomon Islands National Museum) and Ralph Regenvanu (Director, Vanuatu Cultural Centre) with the assistance of Bernice Murphy (Chair, ICOM Ethics Committee) and Professor Amareswar Galla (Director of Graduate Studies in Sustainable Heritage Development, The Australian National University and Vice President, ICOM). The Workshop was convened by the Pacific Asia Observatory for Cultural Diversity in Human Development and the Cross Cultural Taskforce of ICOM. For details visit: www.pacificasiaobservatory.org