UNESCO World Heritage regions are historically constructed categories that do not easily map onto global geographies, yet they still continue to have important political and ethical implications in the international arena. Since their inception, regional categories have been at the heart of debates over global representation and equity in the World Heritage Committee. We include the recent controversy over uneven regional representation in elections to the Committee and the measures adopted to remedy this for the future. Specifically, the “Europe and North America” regional group has historically been the most dominant region and, as we demonstrate, continues to be so despite measures such as the Global Strategy. In the last decade, however, the “Asia and the Pacific” regional group has exhibited a growing presence in many aspects of World Heritage. We go on to examine overall trends from annual sessions of the World Heritage Committee from its start in 1977 to 2014 in terms of site inscription on the World Heritage List, membership on the Committee and size of national delegations in order to look in greater detail at the rising profile of Asia. This leads to a discussion of the different forms and understandings of regionalism, whether for Europe or Asia, and how some Asian delegations see their increased role and visibility in World Heritage.

The convergence of Yoruba nationals and the intensification of nationalism in southwestern Nigeria for self-assertion, political brokerage, and power relations in colonial and post-colonial eras were reinforced by the projection of Yoruba cultural heritage and patrimony expressed both in person and literary productions. Using textual analysis and observation, this paper examines some aspects of cultural heritage and Yoruba nationalism and how cultural heritage created patrimony, the sense of a nation, established civic virtue, and formed local (re)publics in southwestern Nigeria. The present discourse further examines how cultural patrimony is used to echo Yoruba sense of marginalization and political superiority in Nigeria. The paper further argues that most of this cultural heritage addresses a fairly well-defined audience, most especially those sympathetic to Yoruba nationalism and politics. Thus, cultural heritage and patrimony are active agents of nationalism and political identity in southwestern Nigeria.

The article contrasts long-suppressed details of German art seizures during the Second World War from Ukrainian state museums and Western Jewish dealers, ordered to Königsberg by Erich Koch, Gauleiter of East Prussia and Reich Commissar of Ukraine. While most of the art from Kyiv was destroyed by retreating Germans when the Red Army arrived (February 1945), here we investigate “survivors.” Initial provenance findings about the collection Koch evacuated to Weimar in February 1945 reveal some paintings from Kyiv. More, however, were seized from Dutch and French Holocaust victims by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and his cohorts, including Jewish dealers Jacques Goudstikker (Amsterdam) and Georges Wildenstein (Paris). Many paintings deposited in Weimar disappeared west; others seized by Soviet authorities were transported to the Hermitage. These initial findings draw attention to hitherto overlooked contrasting examples of patterns of Nazi art looting and destruction in the East and West, and the pan-European dispersal of important works of art.

Cultural property claims are numerous and of very different nature. Some relate to recent trafficking of cultural property;1 some are based on ancient legal grounds which are contested today;2 others relate to past wars and colonial times;3 others, still, relate to mass spoliations in times of conflict.4 In general, though, the original owner seeks to recover what was taken from him, or at least to obtain some form of compensation.5 The present owner or possessor is as a matter of principle interested in keeping his possession.6 These conflicting positions are often seen as irreconcilable and, indeed, litigation in a traditional manner will bring to the typical “either/or” solution: either I am the owner, or you are. There is no in-between solution.

In the UK, there is a public perception that, if a cultural object is given to a museum, it will remain in its collections forever. But does UK law reflect this? This article analyses UK law and discusses whether a commercial approach is not always well suited to serve the needs of the museum sector and whether there should be more thought given to the public nature of museums. It calls for law reform in order to ensure that UK law and ethical guidance relating to deaccessioning and disposals from collections is sufficient to maintain public trust, so that people continue to visit museums and to offer objects for their collections.

In the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, Iraqi forces prosecuted a mass campaign of pillage and destruction. Under the coordinated direction of Iraqi curators who were well acquainted with Kuwait’s cultural treasures, occupying Iraqi troops plundered thousands of cultural objects from museums, libraries, and archives. Among the pillaged cultural spoils were Kuwait’s national archives, comprising the emirate’s historical memory. Until recently, Iraq was beholden to UN sanctions demanding the return of missing persons and property, including Kuwait’s archives. Although the United Nations Security Council for many years has facilitated efforts to search for the lost archives, these efforts have proved futile. This article explores the plausibility of the two most likely scenarios surrounding the cold case of Kuwait’s missing archives: 1) that the current search for the archives has overlooked the possibility that they were unknowingly seized by US forces in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and are currently being held by the Pentagon; and 2) that the archives may have been intentionally destroyed as part of Saddam Hussein’s aim to obliterate Kuwait’s national identity and annex the emirate as Iraq’s nineteenth province.

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.

The development of the urban space of Ground Zero has been a long and difficult process, resulting in the removal of almost all of its material history. The material objects formerly present on the site had an important part and significant agency in the struggle between different stakeholders of Ground Zero. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and Larry Silverstein, owner and leaseholder of the sixteen acres that held the Twin Towers, intended to rebuild the ten million square feet of office space that was destroyed on 9/11. This force of production asserted itself over possible modes of consumption of the space, each championed and represented by overlapping groups of people. Some wished to see the space redeveloped as a site of mourning, others as a site fit for touristic consumption, as a space for residence, or as a site representing a material past older than 9/11. It shall be argued that for these consumer groups the symbolic complexity of the site, and its potential power in political performances, was intricately connected to space and the material agency of objects remaining on Ground Zero post 2001.

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.

The concept of the “cultural heritage of all humankind” is often summarily dismissed by scholars, possibly due to the aura of unscholarly idealism it appears to emanate. However, it has long been claimed that the special status of objects of cultural, historical, or religious value is a consequence of their importance to the whole humanity rather than their economic or aesthetic value. Global outrage provoked by destruction of unique symbols of our shared past is proof that such claims are not unfounded. Considering that cultural heritage faces increasing risk of intentional destruction for ideological reasons, and the discriminatory intent inherent in such devastations poses a threat to the entire international community, it is opportune to initiate a discussion on the adequacy of the existing legal mechanisms for the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflicts and the perspectives it offers to address these challenges in a comprehensive and informed manner.

During the seventies, archaeological looting, of both land and underwater sites, not only was widespread in Spain, but also went unpunished. This situation stemmed from a lack of effective administrative and criminal legislation, human resources to combat the plague, and educational policies warning of how harmful such practices were, in spite of damning reports in the media and the social alarm raised in certain professional and political fields. The new political and social phase that began with the Constitution of 1978 has enabled the country to overcome this situation in three ways: first, by passing new, more appropriate administrative and criminal laws to help combat looting and illicit trade; second, through the creation of new regional governments (the autonomous communities) able to enforce these laws, and which have hired archaeologists specializing in cultural heritage management. The fight against the criminal aspect of looting and the illicit trade of antiquities has also been intensified by the creation of police and prosecuting bodies dedicated to the area of cultural heritage, among others. Last, educational policies have been put in place to help increase social awareness of the importance of our cultural heritage and the global loss its destruction represents. In this article we will present the first two points that have improved the initial situation as regards archaeological looting and the illicit trade of looted goods.

In June 2015, a United States district court in California found that the Madrid-based Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation had acquired ownership of a Camille Pissarro painting under Spanish adverse possession law. Unless overturned on appeal, the decision will end the long-running efforts by the heirs of Lilly Cassirer Neubauer to recover the painting, which was wrongfully taken by the Nazis. The decision to apply Spanish law determined the outcome of the case, and the court’s discussion of choice-of-law issues is notable given the decisive effect that the applicable law often has in art and cultural property ownership disputes. After describing the background and reasoning of the case, this case note comments on two interesting aspects of the decision: its discussion of choice of law in the context of suits against foreign government entities and its treatment of a recent amendment to California law intended to make it easier to recover stolen art.

UK museums are required to present themselves as the ethical guardians rather than simply the owners of their collections (Museums Association Code of Ethics principles 1.0 and 1.3). Museums which are members of the International Council of Museums are required, when acquiring objects for their collections, to ensure that they obtain valid title, rather than simply strict legal title, to the object (ICOM Code of Ethics, principle 2.2). This notion of valid title focuses on the relationship between the current possessor (the museum) and the object. However, one can also see the concept of claimants having moral claims to cultural heritage objects developing in the context of the notion of the “rightful owner” which is a term increasingly deployed to signify the person who has a valid moral, rather than legal, claim to the cultural heritage object (Seventh Report of the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee 1999-2000 [193]).

Since 2000 the UK has introduced mechanisms to resolve, in limited circumstances, moral claims to cultural objects of which their owners were dispossessed during the Nazi era. This paper analyses the way in which a concept of moral title can be seen to have developed in the context of the resolution of Nazi era claims by the UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel. To this end the paper analyses: how far the moral entitlement is linked with the legal title to the object; and whether moral title arises from the morally abhorrent dispossession that befell the claimant or his ancestor or whether it results from the recommendation of the Spoliation Advisory Panel. It is argued that the development of the notion of moral title poses challenges for the future, but an understanding of its role may also inform the resolution of disputes involving cultural heritage objects outside the context of the Nazi era.

Article 12 of the Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2003, provides that the States Parties are under obligation at the national level to draw up one or more inventories of the intangible cultural heritage present in their respective territories. Indonesia has been a State Party to the Convention since 2007, but until now, no specific law on intangible cultural heritage has been enacted. In 2010, the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture, jointly with UNESCO, published the Practical Handbook for Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Indonesia. With the legal vacuum, the Handbook became a source for guidelines on the implementation of the inventory obligation in Indonesia; it provides that there shall be a manual inventory and an online inventory. However, in practice, there are two web sites functioning as online inventories, and the contents of the two web sites do not seem to reflect one of the Convention’s purposes, which is awareness. This article scrutinizes the contents of the publicly accessible online inventories and finds that the absence of statutory regulation has resulted in difficulties for those inventories to fulfill the purpose of awareness as mandated by the Convention.

Private ownership and cultural heritage protection are two interests in continuing tension. The traditional conception of property right is based on an absolute individual right to the peaceful enjoyment of possessions. However, interference in this right may restrict its exercise and impose charges on the owner, such as classification measures and conservation easements. This paper formulates a hypothesis about an increased protection of cultural heritage along with that of private ownership.

Against the background of a complex constitutional allocation of cultural powers, Belgian law provides a pertinent illustration of this development. At the one hand, Belgian governments have been adopting more extensive legislation protecting cultural heritage. On the other hand, Belgian courts, traditionally reluctant to recognize any compensation right when the protective measure only restricts the ownership, gradually appear to undertake a more thorough analysis of the fair balance between the conflicting interests, notably in favor of the owner.

The authors gauge the merits of a new model of cultural heritage protection.