Ownership of Cultural Artifacts

After the YSL of the bronze animal heads and the sale of Ganhi's personal effects including pocket watch, sandals and glasses there remain many legal and ethical issues concerning ownership rights of cultural property. As appraisers we need to know if item ownership is contested as it very well could impact the value, ability to sell or where to sell.

Fobres.com is running an interesting article by Alexander Bevilacqua entitled National Treasures for Sale, Do Cultural Artifacts Belong in their Country of Origin.

Bevilacque briefly relates the stories behind the Gandhi' artifacts and the bronze animal heads as background for the article. One interesting point is the UNESCO agreement which the US has signed only involves cultural property removed from the country of origin after 1970 and has no retroactive clauses attached. That leaves many artifacts open to legal proceedings.

Bevilacque states China and India's arguments may seem, then, like hollow nationalist rhetoric. They are certainly a disingenuous public relations coup, designed to provoke national sentiment.

Yet they are also based on a concept of national cultural property that is now universally recognized, though India and China's application of the concept is much broader and looser than the relevant laws allow.

U.S. courts recognize that in countries like China, any item of cultural value unearthed is automatically owned by the state. The person to discover the object has no property claim on it. Such national property claims have been upheld in American courts when cultural goods were brought illicitly to these shores.

He concludes with The free market is not the only way to ensure the mobility of art: state ownership hardly prevents artworks from traveling, as attested by current exhibitions of French sculpture at the Met and Norwegian paintings at the Art Institute.

The controversies surrounding the Saint Laurent and Gandhi auctions served many ends. Yet a concept invoked by most participants, global ethics, appears to have guided no one. Of a genuinely global policy for the guardianship of cultural goods, one might say what Gandhi reportedly remarked of Western civilization: it would be a good idea.

To read the Forbes article, click HERE.