ICOMOS Lecture - Illegal trade and ownership of cultural heritage
Matters surrounding the legality of ownership and the illicit trade of cultural goods are an increasingly pressing issue. It is often claimed that somewhere around the world, a cultural object is being looted, stolen from a museum, illegally excavated, or smuggled across a border every single day. EU Member States are both countries of source and of transit, but they can also be counted among the key destinations for cultural objects trafficked from areas all over the globe.
In recent years the efforts to combat the illegal trade of cultural goods, as well as cases of restitution, have gained more attention in both (international) policy development and media outings. A recent example is the case of last December’s landmark restitution of over 200 looted antiquities from the U.S. to Italy, which was extensively commented on by the (inter-)national press. The development of INTERPOL’s ID-Art mobile app is another novel way the international community is facilitating this fight.
Tapping directly into these actualities, the next online ICOMOS lecture on Wednesday May 11th will focus on questions of legality, ownership and restitution. Two guest speakers will approach the matter from the perspective of their own field of expertise: international law and criminology.
Programme
19:30 Welcome and introduction: Charlotte van Emstede (Chair ICOMOS NL) and Ankie Petersen (Host)
19:35 Evelien Campfens: Who should own the past?
19:55 Short Q&A
20:05 Break
20:15 Donna Yates: What Museums Should Know About the Laundering of Illicit Antiquities
20:35 Q&A and Panel discussion
21:00 End
Donna Yates
Dr. Donna Yates is an Associate Professor in the department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Maastricht University. Her research is focused on the transnational illicit trade in cultural objects, art and heritage crime, and white collar crime. Yates has previously held a Leverhulme Fellowship and a Core Fulbright Award to study the on-the-ground effects of high-level cultural policy in Latin America and her current work involves security for and protection of sacred art in Latin America and South Asia. Her research and other open research materials can be found on her ever-growing collection of websites, including traffickingculture.org, anonymousswisscollector.com, news.culturecrime.org, and stolengods.org.
Evelien Campfens
Dr. Evelien Campfens is a lawyer specialized in international cultural heritage law. Currently she is post-doc fellow at the Museums, Collections and Society group of Leiden University and, besides, acts as a consultant on matters concerning art and cultural heritage law. Before joining Leiden University in 2016, she was general secretary to the Dutch Restitutions Committee for Nazi looted from its establishment in 2002 until 2015. She is also coordinator of the Heritage Under Threat group of the LED Centre for Global Heritage and Development; member of the Committee on Participation in Global Cultural Heritage Governance of the International Law Association; and member of the Ethics Committee of the Dutch Museum Association (Ethische Codecommissie). Evelien lectures and publishes regularly, most recently ‘Cross-border Claims to Cultural Objects. Property or heritage?’ ( Eleven Publishers, the Hague, Nov. 2021).
About the lectures
Who should own the past? by Dr. Evelien Campfens
‘Cultural objects have had a protected status since the early days of international law and the legal framework that ensures this protection is expanding. Nevertheless, when it comes to claims by the original owners to their lost artefacts the situation is less straightforward. By discussing two recent Dutch cases - one concerning Crimean archaeological finds and one concerning an antique Chinese Buddha statue – Evelien will sketch the legal context for such claims. If we truly wish to protect cultural heritage in situ, she pleads, international regulations in this field should be taken more seriously in market countries.
Dirty Antiquities: What Heritage Professionals Should Know About Illicit Antiquities by Dr. Donna Yates
In late 2021 investigative reporting of the Pandora Papers leak linked antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford to money laundering, and early 2022 saw the repatriation of millions of euros worth of looted Cambodian antiquities that Latchford sold to museums and collectors. Using Latchford as a starting off point and continuing with the results of the Trafficking Culture Project’s field research in Cambodia (traffickingculture.org), I will discuss the structure of antiquities smuggling networks, how various systems and institutions support this illicit trade, and some approaches heritage professionals can take to preventing it.
How to join
Sign up for this lecture by sending an e-mail to lezingen@icomos.nl