Posted on: April 15, 2016 by Alexander Herman
Since we last reported on the matter, there have been some (potentially positive) developments on the issue of the Australian Aboriginal bark etchings in the collection of the British Museum being claimed by descendants of the Dja Dja Wurrung people who had initially made them in the mid 19th century. An article by Paul Daley in the Guardian from […]
Posted on: May 31, 2015 by Alexander Herman
The disputed collection that had once belonged to the great Irish dealer and collector Sir Hugh Lane has once again made the headlines. Lane died one hundred years ago this month on the Lusitania when the ship was sunk by German U-boats on its journey from New York to Liverpool. He had put together a fantastic art […]
Posted on: May 18, 2015 by Alexander Herman
As many of you know, the Institute of Art and Law, the British Library and the Union Internationale des Avocats are organising a conference next month on the theft and recovery of books, manuscripts and maps. The one-day conference is entitled The Written Heritage of Mankind in Peril and will be hosted by the British Library, taking […]
Posted on: April 20, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Having highlighted the issue in an earlier post, the criticism of the upcoming British Museum exhibition, Indigenous Australia: Enduring Civilization (a purposely ambiguous title?) has become more vociferous with a cutting article published recently in The Guardian provocatively entitled ‘Preservation or plunder? The battle over the British Museum’s Indigenous Australian show’. Past events involving the Dja Dja Wurrung bark etchings are […]
Posted on: April 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Newspapers around the globe last week reported on the story of a Palestinian man from Gaza, Rabie Dardouna, who had unwittingly sold a door with a Banksy mural on it. Banksy had reportedly taken a tour of Gaza following the 2014 Israel-Gaza War and put up a number of characteristic works on bombed-out buildings. This […]