Posted on: May 25, 2022 by Alexander Herman
On 8 May, the exhibition Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution concluded at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Several of the pieces on display had been lent by collections in Russia, namely those of the Kremlin in Moscow and the Hermitage in St Petersburg. The exhibition, which opened on 20 November 2021, began in a […]
Posted on: October 28, 2021 by Emilie Huisman-van Essen
The Amsterdam Court of Appeal delivered its final decision this week in the much-debated case about the golden treasures that have been in the possession of the Allard Pierson Museum (left) in the Netherlands since 2014. Both the lending Crimean Museums and the Ukrainian State have been demanding the return of the objects following the […]
Posted on: November 29, 2018 by Sharon Hecker
The Benin Dialogue Group has recently announced plans to construct a new Royal Museum in Nigeria to display objects looted from the country that are now in European collections. This is an excellent example of what I call cultural ‘matrimony’, a new approach that can be used to resolve heritage disputes. This solution is in […]
Posted on: September 25, 2015 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
A change to the law in Scotland could have an impact on objects left at museums, where the owner has disappeared or has become untraceable. The draft bill before the Scottish Parliament would first seek to introduce a 20 year positive prescription period, whereby a possessor of corporeal movable property (i.e. an object like a painting) would […]
Posted on: August 14, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Having finished the IAL refresher course in Melbourne this week (with the full Diploma in Law and Collections Management course starting next Monday), it has become clear yet again the difficulties which museums face when dealing with certain objects in their collections. The difficulties stem from an uncertainty as to whether an object has been given (‘gifted’ or donated) to […]
Posted on: May 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman
An interesting recent article in the New York Times recounts the struggle between two Spanish Museums over the right to display four paintings, including two masterpieces of European art (Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and Rogier van der Weyden’s Descent from the Cross). The works have been held at the Prado Museum in Madrid since being sent […]
Posted on: April 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Today it was announced that British Museum Director Neil MacGregor will step down at the end of 2015. This will come as a shock to most. Certainly since within the last year the heads of two of Britain’s most respectable cultural institutions, the National Gallery (Nicholas Penny) and the National Portrait Gallery (Sandy Nairne), have also […]
Posted on: March 30, 2015 by Alexander Herman
With an end of March deadline looming, the UK government and the British Museum have at last responded to UNESCO’s request to enter into mediation with Greece regarding the future treatment of the Elgin (or Parthenon) Marbles. The request was made on 9 August 2013 at the behest of Greece (both the UK and Greece are members […]
Posted on: February 19, 2015 by Ruth Redmond-Cooper
A reminder that the evening seminar, Succession Planning for Art: Owners, Collectors and Creators, will run this Wednesday, 25th February 2015, at Collyer Bristow LLP in London. It will cover the ways in which artists, dealers and collectors can plan for the treatment of works of art following death, touching upon the following areas: gifts, loans, wills, […]
Posted on: December 16, 2014 by Alexander Herman
Much has been made in the last while about the loan of the Ilissus statue from the British Museum to the Hermitage in Putin’s St Petersburg. But relatively little coverage has been given to a number of loans from 21 Greek museums for a series of shows across North America over the next year. The exhibition The Greeks […]