Under the postwar American occupation of Germany, art produced by the Staffel der bildenden Künstler (German Combat Artist Unit) of Nazi Germany was sent to US military sites for storage under the direction of Captain Gordon Gilkey. Gilkey was head of the German War Art Project, the arm of the Historical Division of the US army tasked with confiscating German “propaganda and war art.” This art, considered a dangerous instrument of Nazi revival, was not protected by laws prohibiting art looting. Yet American officers were sympathetic to many of the paintings created by combat artists, and the German combat artists themselves were torn about their roles in Nazism, perceiving themselves as either victims or survivors merely attempting to make a living. This article traces the history of this artwork from its seizure in postwar Germany through its internment in the United States up to later attempts in the 1950s and 1980s to restitute the works to their creators.

This article examines the process of text-based negotiations surrounding the documents of the 1972 Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. It focuses on revisions to the Operational Guidelines of the Convention and utilizes ethnographic observation and textual examination to show how alternative, and often the most controversial, proposals are silenced through the practice of consensus. It expands anthropological perspectives on the inner workings of intergovernmental institutions and adds to the literature on heritage regimes by providing examples from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) most prestigious intergovernmental committee. Ultimately, the article enhances our understanding of the political tensions and practical limitations of policymaking within intergovernmental organizations in the United Nations, including UNESCO.

This article considers the recent and vigorous critique of the Dutch restitution policy on Nazi-looted art in connection with the inclusion of what has been termed the “public interest” in the applicable substantive assessment framework. This assessment framework is entirely based on morally induced policy rules, and it allows the Dutch Restitutions Committee to advise on requests for restitution based on a weighing of interests, including the significance of the work to a museum or public art collection. Although one might question the appropriateness of such interests in a framework designed to remedy historic injustices, it remains to be seen whether this critique is entirely justified. Recent recommendations issued by the Dutch Restitutions Committee indicate that it takes a generous, rather than strict, approach when dealing with requests for restitution. All in all, it seems that both institutional and substantive vulnerability are inevitable if one embarks on a morally induced framework based on mere policy rules rather than legal rules.

Organ craftsmanship and music are inextricably linked with each other. In Germany, a particularly rich symbiosis between craftspeople, composers, and performing artists has evolved over the centuries. In recognizing the transmission of this intangible cultural know-how from generation to generation, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) inscribed organ craftsmanship and music together in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. This article elucidates how this inscription influences the perception and self-concept of organ craftsmanship and music, both in theoretic-intellectual and in virtual terms. Complementing the qualitative content analysis of literature and documents, narrative first-hand accounts/expert interviews with organ craftspeople/organ builders have been conducted and interpreted. Taking into account a dual nexus of cultural sustainability and intangible cultural heritage, sustainable value creation, substantial claims, multi-perspective visibility, and facilitative reassurance were analyzed and assessed vis-à-vis organ craftsmanship and music. Including organ craftsmanship and music in UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity demonstrates an appreciation for sustainable value creation related to the quadruple bottom-line of sustainability – that is, addressing economic, environmental, and societal aspects, including culture as a fully integrated dimension; claims substantial rights for safeguarding and invoking/activating heritage; enhances visibility of performing organists, assigned organ builders, frequent practitioners, and nominated organ experts; and enables reassurance of passion and self-positioning with organ craftsmanship and music.

The collection of liturgical objects of the Pechory Monastery close to the city of Pskov on Lake Peipus was deployed as a repository in Germany by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg during World War II. After the war, it was not subject to intergovernmental restitution but was stored away in the Wiesbaden Central Collecting Point and subsequently handed over to the newly founded Icon Museum of Recklinghausen before being restituted to the monastery almost two decades later. This article gives a description of the treasure itself and its history. It traces the odyssey of the treasure in Germany until its restitution and examines the different stages of its journey. The handling of this case in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) is symptomatic of the official German attitude toward National Socialist cultural loot and of the changing debates around this subject throughout the decades. These debates form a micro-history that reflects the FRG’s master narratives about World War II and its consequences, the division of Germany, and its changing, but questionable, relationship to the Soviet Union. In addition, it closely follows the political mainstream from the deep anti-Soviet attitudes of the postwar years to Chancellor Willy Brandt’s policy of détente in the 1970s, which made the restitution actually possible. The act in its entity can be seen as a typical example of Nazi Germany’s art looting in the occupied parts of Europe and of the particular conditions in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the after-war restitution policies of the Western allies and the FRG. It is nonetheless typical of the Soviet Union’s policy of denying restitutions later on, including immediate postwar restitutions as well as later acts such as the one involving the Pechory treasure, which has sometimes been repeated up to the present day.

A number of recent works have explored the value of scholarly efforts to “unpack” museum collections and examine the constitutive networks and histories of objects. The interrogations of collections through methods such as object biographies and itineraries imparts important knowledge about the institutions, disciplines, and individuals who made museum collections, contribute to deeper understandings of the roles of objects in creating meaning in and of the world, and suggest implications for future practice and policies. This article examines the object itinerary of a cultural property item of negative heritage: a three-dimensional painted plaster work of craft-art originally designed to symbolize the scientific practice of anthropology in early twentieth-century Germany and later associated with wartime collecting during World War II, the history of American archaeology, and the modern repatriation movement in museums.

This article analyzes the debate between the proponents and opponents of artistic moral rights and, more specifically, the right of integrity as recognized in the Berne Convention, with the aid of agonistic political theory. Envisaging art as a site of antagonistic struggle, the right of integrity is conceived of as a state-backed mandate to claim an inviolable place for artistic work, founded on a Romantic notion of authorship. The plea against the entrenchment of this right is considered a counter-hegemonic response that challenges this notion in favor of an unfettered development of art and its surrounding discourse. As such, this debate seems to revolve around a conflict of alleged interests – those of artists, of art’s public, and of art itself. It is argued that insights into the discursive behavior of rights, and, by extension, into the effect of rights discourses on antagonistic struggle, are needed to foster this debate.

This article examines the extent to which a recent law reform initiative in New South Wales (NSW), Australia—the draft Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill 2018 (NSW)—advances the general principles outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The examination reveals some improvements on the current legal framework and some concerning proposals that distance the NSW government from the UNDRIP principles. Key concerns include a proposed transfer of administrative responsibility to Aboriginal bodies with no corresponding guarantee of funding; the continued vesting of key decision-making powers in government; inept provisions for the protection of secret knowledge; and lower penalties for harming cultural heritage than for related offences in existing environmental and planning legislation. Given the bill’s weaknesses, the article explores pragmatic alternatives to better advance the UNDRIP principles.

When, the day after the Anschluss, the Viennese aristocrat Henriette von Motesiczky and her daughter, the painter Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, fled Vienna, they left behind an “old German” painting known as Knight and Devil. In 2016, by now identified as part of an early sixteenth-century altarpiece by the Master of St Christopher with the Devil and entitled St Christopher Meeting the Devil, the painting entered the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. It was donated by the Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust in memory of its former owner Karl von Motesiczky, Marie-Louise’s brother, who had perished in Auschwitz. This article, based on detailed archival research, traces the history of St Christopher Meeting the Devil after 1938. The painting, forcefully taken from its owner, made its way through the National Socialist art-looting operation, encountering some of its main protagonists in the process. Sold at auction in 1943, it ended up at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich from where, in 1950, it was restituted to the surviving members of the Motesiczky family, now living in England. In an exemplary way, the fate of St Christopher Meeting the Devil throws a light on the workings of the National Socialist looting system and the steps that the Allied Forces undertook after the war to rectify the crimes they uncovered. It also highlights the problems that gaps in the knowledge of an artwork’s provenance can cause in the attempt to reconstruct cases of expropriation and emphasizes the role goodwill plays in reaching fair solutions.

Perhaps the most difficult assignments in architecture are those requiring that tradition be brought into the design. This wish might be included in the assignment by the client or it may be a goal set by the designers themselves. This article takes up the topic of cultural borrowings as well as the relationship between the designer and the features of the local culture – specifically, the Sámi lavvu theme. In this article, some attempts will be presented to make Sámi culture visible in architecture at different times. Architecture follows the same kinds of stereotypical representations that are now criticized in museums when presenting Indigenous peoples. The Sámi are often presented in national museums as a separate theme, and, in architecture, certain themes are highlighted as “Sámi” features. Architecture has remained a discipline that celebrates the mixing of elements and motifs, while many art practices are tightening the boundaries around cultural license. However, this article does not focus on cultural appropriation in architecture or on the imbalance of power in planning; rather, it presents a contribution of how architects have interpreted the lavvu theme in their design between the 1940s and the 1990s. It also highlights the process of change that has taken place over a few decades; strengthening respect for Indigenous cultures and criticizing cultural exploitation have also had an influence on planning.

In this article, we aim to focus on how the Iberian past (sixth century to the first century BC) has been used both to shape identities and to produce values in the marketplace and how the triad of the past, authenticity, and tradition is key in the commodification of the Iberian world. To do so, we will examine developments in the village of Moixent (Valencia, Spain). In this town, the Iberians and their archaeological remains are presented as the protagonists of the area, accompanied by several “heritage stratifications.” Through case studies of family-run wineries, we analyze the process of symbolic appropriation of the Iberians in the local wine sector and its confluence with cultural tourism as well as how it has led to the development of territorial branding based on the past.

The case of the illicit export of a Picasso painting by its owner and its confiscation and recovery by French and Spanish authorities provides an interesting example of the complexities of the transnational criminal, civil, and administrative law protection of national cultural heritage and of the ongoing efforts to achieve useful legal instruments at the European level, which foster and harmonize the current and often informal mechanisms of cooperation and judicial assistance among the different domestic enforcing agencies. It also attempts to show how Spanish authorities have made a legitimate, but possibly overreaching, use of existing European Union law in order to recover and appropriate a valuable work of art.