This article explores the history and present operation of the Waverley system, the United Kingdom's art export policy established in 1952. A key component of the article is its attempt to illuminate the little-known story surrounding the birth of the system, which has been pieced together using treasury and Board of Trade papers held in the National Archives. The article then examines, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how responsibility for the system has evolved. The main pattern that emerges is the progressive detachment of the treasury: Although it spearheaded the formation of the Waverley system in 1952, today it is much more removed, in terms of administration and attitude, from the system.

This paper investigates the relationship between international investment law and the protection of cultural heritage. Two questions arise in this connection. First, are investment agreements compatible with states' obligations to protect cultural heritage? Second, if internal measures aimed at protecting cultural heritage can be challenged by foreign investors, is mixed arbitration a suitable forum to protect public interests Indeed, it seems that the regime established according to investment treaties does not strike an appropriate balance between the different interests concerned. After giving a brief look at the legal framework protecting foreign investments, the conflict areas between investment treaty provisions and national cultural policies are explored through an empirical analysis of the recent arbitral jurisprudence concerning cultural heritage. This paper holds that jurisprudential balancing may not provide an adequate protection to cultural heritage; thus, cultural exceptions should be included in investment agreements.

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]⟩.

The following short articles were presented at a special session of the Pacific Arts Association, held at the College Arts Association annual meeting in New York in February 2007. Entitled “Cultural Properties—Reconnecting Pacific Arts,” the panel brought together curators and anthropologists working in the Pacific, and with Pacific collections elsewhere, with the intention of presenting a series of case studies evoking the discourse around cultural property that has emerged within this institutional, social, and material framework. The panel was conceived in direct response to the ways that cultural property, specifically in relation to museum collections, has been discussed recently in major metropolitan art museums such as the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). This prevailing cultural property discourse tends to use antiquities—that most ancient, valuable, and malleable of material culture, defined categorically by the very distancing of time that in turn becomes a primary justification for their circulation on the market or the covetous evocation of national identity—as a baseline for discussion of broader issues around national patrimony and ownership.

As a result of the development of the sciences of conservation of cultural heritage, the new concept of Cultural Routes shows the evolution of ideas with respect to the vision of cultural properties, as well as the growing importance of values related to their setting and territorial scale, and reveals the macrostructure of heritage on different levels. This concept introduces a model for a new ethics of conservation that considers these values as a common heritage that goes beyond national borders, and which requires joint efforts. By respecting the intrinsic value of each individual element, the Cultural Route recognizes and emphasizes the value of all of its elements as substantive parts of a whole. It also helps to illustrate the contemporary social conception of cultural heritage values as a resource for sustainable social and economic development.

Defining the relationship between folklore and intellectual property continues to be an ongoing debate. Some challenges in defining this relationship center on the main characteristics of intellectual property, namely, the eligibility criteria and limited protection period that make the current construction of intellectual property incompatible with folklore protection. However, countries like Ghana have been using the intellectual property system as one of its tools to protect folklore. This article focuses on traditional textile design protection in Ghana, establishing the importance and significance of these designs in Ghana's history and culture and why Ghana is determined to protect these designs. After examining Ghana's efforts and the obstacles in its path as it uses the intellectual property law system to protect traditional textile designs, the article argues that there should be regional cooperation and international protection to strengthen individual national efforts.

The understanding of the relationship between culture and nature as manifested in the UNESCO declarations and practices has changed over the last few years. The World Heritage Convention is continuing to evolve its definitions to reflect the increasing complexities of world cultures as they grapple with the heritage conservation policies that reflect their multiple stakeholders. They are also integrating a greater cultural perspective in their recent resolutions to the convention. Although the links between nature and culture have been clarified through this new attention to cultural landscapes, many countries and their bureaucracies have not yet adopted these new perspectives. The article suggests that to achieve an integrated approach to conservation, national, regional, and international bodies and their professionals must be involved. Two examples are discussed to address the shortcomings of the application of the convention and to illustrate the complexities of defining and conserving cultural landscapes.

Within this article I discuss the productive potentials of looking at historic photographs of the Purari Delta with indigenous communities today. A particular type of artifact, the meanings of photographs are promiscuous. Thinking about the shape of cultural property relations that are manifest photographs, I show how engagements with indigenous communities unsettles European preconceptions about what photographs are as well as how doing so raises issues about what cultural property is, and perhaps can be. Instead of being a discreet entity, cultural property for the I'ai emerges as a network of relationships that envelopes people, environment, and ancestors. This expansive notion of cultural property can help us rethink how we treat and handle objects within museums and archives.

A long-running dispute between the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and its benefactor foundations illustrates the need for documentation of gifts or loans of artwork. At issue in this dispute is ownership of over 200 of the paintings on display at the gallery valued at up to $200 million. None of the parties to the dispute has been able to produce records to establish that the paintings were either a gift or on loan to the Beaverbrook. Instead the parties have had to rely on newspaper and magazine articles, speeches, gallery catalogues, and export documents to substantiate their positions. Central to the dispute has been the role of the First Lord Beaverbrook and whether his actions amounted to a breach of his fiduciary duty to the gallery. This article examines the particulars of the parties' claims as well as the decisions that have been made to date. Final resolution of the dispute is not expected until all appeals have been decided.

Last year, in volume 13 of this journal, Lyndel Prott published a Case Note entitled, “The Dja Dja Warrung Bark Etchings Case.”Prott, “The Dja Dja Warrung Bark Etchings Case.” In it she set out the background to a court case in Melbourne in 2004 to 2005 under the federal Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977. The case related to three nineteenth-century bark items made by Aboriginal people in northern Victoria, items now held in the collections of two London museums. The items had been borrowed by Museum Victoria and brought to Australia for an exhibition in the Melbourne Museum. During the exhibition, an inspector under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 had imposed a series of successive emergency declarations. The effect of these declarations had been to prevent Museum Victoria from fulfilling its contracts to return the three items to the overseas museums who had lent them for exhibition. The case went to court after several months of unsuccessful negotiations when Museum Victoria successfully challenged the legality of continuous emergency declarations. The inspector then failed in a request to the Victorian Minister for Aboriginal Affairs to make a permanent declaration to keep the objects in Australia, or to acquire the items compulsorily under the Heritage Protection Act. The objects were then returned to Britain.

I was the curator of the exhibition, Etched on Bark 1854: Kulin barks from Northern Victoria, which was held within the Aboriginal Gallery of Melbourne Museum between March and June 2004. This paper is a discussion of some of the issues raised by the exhibition and its aftermath, and it is written from the perspective of a curator and a historian.

The first part of the paper sets out the historical provenance of the three items, and discusses how the items came to be collected and sent overseas in the 1850s. I then describe how the debates at the time of the emergency declarations largely ignored this historical background, suggest some reasons why this occurred, and draw out some implications for the future. Last, I consider issues arising from the claims of ‘ownership’ that were made before and during the court case.This paper builds on two conference papers, one presented to the Museums Australia Conference in Brisbane in May 2006 and the second given to the Conference of the Australian Registrar's Committee in Hobart in November 2006. An expanded version of the first paper, “History, Strong Stories and New Traditions” appears in History Australia, June 2007.

Objects were and still are pivotal in configuring intertribal relationships; and equally, they played a crucial role in negotiating the borders between early colonial situations and Māori, the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. This article explores the notion of object efficacy through discussing further relational values such as place, oral and written histories, visionary leadership, and political and culturally defined imperatives, particularly as they contribute to reviving an object's embedded knowledge, in this case the entangled agencies of taonga.

Meeting in the historic city of Québec (Canada), from 29 September to 4 October 2008, at the invitation of ICOMOS Canada, on the occasion of the 16th General Assembly of ICOMOS and the celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of the founding of Québec, the participants adopt the following Declaration of principles and recommendations to preserve the spirit of place through the safeguarding of tangible and intangible heritage, which is regarded as an innovative and efficient manner of ensuring sustainable and social development throughout the world.

In a recent article published by the International Journal of Cultural Property, “What Does Not Move Any Hearts—Why Should It Be Saved? The Denkmalpflegediskussion in Germany,” Dr. Cornelius Holtorf reviewed an expert report by Dieter Hoffmann-Axthelm, an architectural critic and author of several books on the history of architecture and urban planning, to the German Parliament on the principles and practices of state heritage management in that country. Of Hoffmann-Axthelm's criticisms, the most resonating was the view that heritage management processes in Germany were often patronizing, centralized, and undemocratic. Although his proposed remedies are abundant, some might be interpreted as being divisive, if not contentious. Hoffmann-Axthelm's central argument is that heritage management processes should be driven by the public and, thus, further decentralized.

This paper is a response to an invitation by Holtorf for international comparisons and discussion. It aims to present an overview of Australia's approach to heritage management and discuss a number of issues, raised by Hoffmann-Axthelm, and questions, particularly the merits associated with the concept of “democratising heritage,” posed by Holtorf.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: I wish to thank Dr. Patrick J. O'Keefe for being an inspirational mentor, and am grateful for the thoughtful comments and suggestions provided by Dr. Greg Terrill and Dr. Kirsty Douglas, and the unwavering support and patience of love ones. Opinions in this piece and any errors of fact or interpretation are my own and in no way represent the views of the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.

Debates around cultural properties tend to focus on law and ethics, on appropriation and ownership, with media representations often producing stereotypes that reinforce and polarize the terms of the debate. The common, typically polemical, notion is that rapacious museums are merely a final resting point for captive static objects, with repatriation viewed as simply restorative compensation. A robust challenge to this view was developed in the Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums signed in 2002 by the directors of 19 leading museums in Europe and North America. The concept of the universal museum asserts that objects are cared for and held in trust for the world, overriding shifting political and ethnic boundaries and enabling the visitor to see “different parts of the world as indissolubly linked.” Although many would be in sympathy with the rhetorical position asserted, critics have argued that the declaration is a thinly veiled attempt to bolster immunity to repatriation claims. On both sides of the debate, the hegemonic position of many museums remains unsettling.

The Protected Objects Amendment Act (POA) was passed by the New Zealand Parliament in 2006, so New Zealand could fulfil its obligations under the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970 and the UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects 1995. This represents a significant delay after the drafting of these two conventions. This article explores why New Zealand has taken so long to give domestic effect to these conventions and examines the manner in which they have been given domestic legal effect in the POA. The article also focuses on issues of Māori cultural property, the practical implementation of the POA, and the cultural heritage climate in New Zealand.

The purpose of the Association of Art Museum Directors is to support its members in increasing the contribution of art museums to society. The AAMD accomplishes this mission by establishing and maintaining the highest standards of professional practice; serving as a forum for the exchange of information and ideas to aid its members in their professional roles as art museum directors; acting as an advocate for art museums; and being a leader in shaping public discourse about the arts community and the role of art in society.

On September 25, 2007, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) won its declaratory judgment case against Swiss artist Christoph Büchel and potentially set additional Visual Artist Rights Act (VARA) precedent. Judge Ponsor agreed that Büchel's unfinished work Training Ground for Democracy was not protected by VARA. Artists cried foul. Journalists excoriated the museum with incendiary comments in the New York Times art section such as “the museum deserves to be scathed.”Smith, “Is it Art Yet? And Who Decides?” Why did an artistic disagreement end up ensnared in a relatively nasty legal “custody” battle?

To promote public trust and accountability for U.S. museums, AAM offers the following standards to guide the operations of museums that own or acquire archaeological material and ancient art originating outside the United States.

The images presented document aspects of progress and growth for a significant wetland and coastal restoration project taking place at Kuku, Horowhenua, southwest coast of North Island, Aotearoa, New Zealand. The work is undertaken by representatives from various hapū known as Ngäti Te Rangitäwhia, Te Mateawa, Ngäti Manu, and Ngäti Kapumanawawhiti ki Kuku, who are affiliates of a larger tribal group, or iwi, Ngäti Tükorehe. The research project (undertaken while working as senior curator Mätauranga Mäori at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington) links cultural landscape issues and activities to the concerns for cultural property as revered taonga with special qualities within museum collections. The term taonga is relevant to understanding culturally venerated items within museum holdings while honoring their associated peoples, tribal lands, and waterways from where they derive. As significant cultural material, taonga are valued because of their associations. Cultural landscapes are also well regarded as land-, sea-, and water-based taonga—an encompassing term that denotes their intrinsic value and intricate natural, cultural, and spiritual interrelationships. As museum professionals rethink cultural property issues in different ways, the academic research has also embraced the concept of land- and water-based taonga to bolster ecological, cultural, and spiritual contexts that persist in ancestral lands in tribal tenure.

Blanket ownership laws, export restrictions, and the criminal law of market nations are the default legal strategies currently used by nations of origin to prevent the looting of archaeological sites. Although they have been remarkably successful at achieving the return of looted objects, they may not be the best strategies to maximize the recording and preservation of archaeological context. In England and Wales a more permissive legal regime broadly applied and adopted by the public at large has produced dramatically better results than the strong prescriptive regime of Scotland, which can be easily ignored.

This article attempts to clear up any misconceptions of the cultural policy framework in England and Wales. It accounts for the legal position accorded undiscovered portable antiquities, and describes how this legal framework is perfected by a voluntary program called the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS). This approach stands in stark contrast to Scotland, which has used a legal strategy adopted by most other nations of origin.

The domestic legal framework for portable antiquities in England and Wales is unique and differs from the typical approach. Coupled with the PAS, this legal structure has resulted in a better cultural policy, which leads to less looting of important archaeological sites, allows for a tailored cultural policy, and has produced more data and contextual information with which to conduct historical and archaeological research on an unprecedented scale. Compensating finders of antiquities may even preclude an illicit market in antiquities so long as this compensation is substantially similar to the market price of the object and effectively excludes looters from this reward system. Although the precise number of found versus looted objects that appear on the market is open to much speculation, an effective recording system is essential to ensure that individuals who find objects are encouraged to report them.