My Piece on the Cultural Heritage Movement and Environmental Justice

A typical row house in Houston's 4th Ward, from 1984. Via FPH.

I've just received the final proof of an article I've written where I try to trace the connections between material culture and the environment: Justice and the Cultural Heritage Movement: Using Environmental Justice to Appraise Art and Antiquities Disputes, 20 Va. J. Soc. Pol’y & L. 43 (2012).

In the piece I look to some of the writing being done on environmental justice and I think about what lessons we can take as cultural heritage advocates. I examine disputes ranging from looting of antiquities sites to the lack of preservation of certain areas here in Houston like Freedmen's town.

Here's a short video segment interviewing an advocate for Houston's Fourth Ward:




It's a theoretical piece. One which I'll freely admit is partly aspirational. But one that I'm proud of. As always I'd welcome any feedback. Here's the abstract:

What does justice require? This paper aims to spark a conversation about the role of justice in art and antiquities disputes by introducing the concept of cultural justice. Borrowing from a principle known as environmental justice, cultural justice allows the application of critical scrutiny to the law and norms that govern cultural heritage. The history of environmental justice—including both its successes and failures—offers important lessons for the cultural heritage movement. Environmental and cultural injustice plagues the same nations and groups: Africa, Central and South America, and indigenous groups are denied the same environmental and cultural benefits. The cultural heritage movement has been subject to the same criticisms as the environmental justice movement, but has not had the benefit of an animating theoretical framework. The law strains to resolve art and antiquities disputes. Examining disputes through the lens of cultural justice allows us to move beyond thinking about art in terms of keeping it in museums (or the art trade) or returning it to its nation of origin. This paper applies Rawls’s theory of justice to cultural heritage and presents a taxonomy of cultural justice, examining in detail its distributive, procedural, corrective, and social aspects. Thinking about cultural justice allows a deeper understanding of the reasons why cultural heritage disputes are so difficult to resolve. By considering cultural justice, we can also begin to define the limits of what law and policy can do to remedy historical and contemporary art taking. These limits have eluded cultural heritage advocates, subjecting the cultural heritage movement to broad criticisms.

As always, I am very happy to post any link or abstract to anyone's writing in the cultural heritage field, whether it's a work in progress or has been published. Just drop me a comment below, or email me at derek.fincham 'at' gmail.com.

Justice and the Cultural Heritage Movement: Using Environmental Justice to Appraise Art and Antiquities Disputes, 20 Va. J. Soc. Pol’y & L. 43 (2012).

Shearing on Australia's Heritage Law Framework

Susan Shearing, a Lecturer at the Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law at the University of Sydney has authored "Reforming Australia's National Heritage Law Framework" in Volume 8(2) of the Macquarie Journal of International and Comparative Environmental Law (2012). (PDF) From the abstract:

It is argued that while some useful initiatives have been adopted in response to the review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, the overall response of the Government has been disappointing, focusing on refining procedural frameworks to facilitate a streamlined approach to heritage assessment and approvals rather than substantive reform to the EPBC Act. Further, there has been limited progress in reforming national laws dealing with indigenous heritage, movable heritage and historic shipwrecks.

Tushnet on Images in Design Patents

The 1937 design patent for the coke bottle

Rebecca Tushnet of Georgetown Law has an essay titled: "The Eye Alone is the Judge: Images and Design patents", 19 J. Intell. Prop. L. 409 (2012).

Design patents are an area of intellectual property law focused entirely on the visual, unlike copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, or the various sui generis protections that have occasionally been enacted for specific types of innovation. Judges and lawyers in general are highly uncomfortable with images, yet design patents force direct legal engagement with images. This short piece offers an outsider’s view of what design patent law has to say about the use of images as legal tools, why tests for design patent infringement are likely to stay unsatisfactory, and what lessons other fields of intellectual property, specifically copyright, might take from design patent.

Miller on "The Visual and the Law of Cities"

Stephen Miller, of the University of Idaho College of Law has posted "The Visual and the Law of Cities", forthcoming in the Pace Law Review, on SSRN. From the abstract:

This experimental article will attempt to explore, through brief sketches, or “tableaus,” four ways in which the visual interplays with the law of cities, and how a deeper understanding of this intersection can assist in the development of these laws and their underlying policies. For the purposes of this article, the “law of cities” is defined as those allied fields of law that deal with building, construction, architecture, planning, developing, preserving, and otherwise creating the places where we live. First, the article explores the law’s longstanding adverse relationship to the visual, as well as contemporary efforts to change that relationship. The article then turns to the four tableaus that explore the law of cities and the visual. In the first tableau, the article discusses the question of the cultural value of a hand-drawn map by reviewing the U.S. Supreme Court’s nineteenth century jurisprudence on Spanish era diseños, or property maps, which were part of Spanish and Mexican California-era land grants. In the second tableau, the article discusses the question of whether aesthetics is a proper domain of the law of cities by comparing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Berman v. Parker, its progeny, and Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, which was the first, and perhaps most important, comprehensive plan drafted for an American city in the “City Beautiful” tradition. The third tableau explores the production of space and the philosophy of Henri Lefebvre in the context of the visual as law, most notably, in the rise of visual zoning codes. The fourth tableau extends the law and literature movement to the visual arts through the philosophy of Edward Casey as applied to the painter Edward Hopper. By presenting these four approaches in which the visual complicates and assists the law of cities, and sometimes even acts as the law of cities, the article intends to spur a dialogue on the complicated relationship of the visual to the law of cities.

Student Note Examining Bakalar v. Vavra and choice of law in New York

Egon Schiele, Seated Woman With Bent Left Leg (Torso)

The June issue of the Columbia Law Review has an interesting student note by Laurie Frey, Bakalar v. Vavra and the Art of Conflicts Analysis in New York: Framing a Choice of Law Approach for Moveable Property, 112 Colum. L. Rev. 1055 (2012). The case involves this 1917 gouache and crayon work which passed through an Austirian shipping company during the holocaust era.

From the introduction:

The facts of Bakalar v. Vavra presented a familiar scenario in Holocaust-era art cases. A good faith purchaser, who thought he had bought clear title to a drawing, went to sell the drawing at auction in New York and found himself confronted by the claims of alleged heirs, who asserted that the painting was taken from their ancestor by the Nazis. Typical of art cases, the drawing had passed through a number of jurisdictions before arriving in New York, and the court in Bakalar faced the difficult question of what jurisdiction's laws to apply to determine which of the parties had title to the drawing. This Note examines the particular importance of choosing the law to apply in disputes between good faith purchasers of artworks and the artworks' original owners, or their heirs—disputes in which the law chosen may lead to dramatically different results. The Note then reviews the evolution of the analysis for choice of law generally and in New York particularly. Prior to Bakalar, the law in New York appeared to be a combination of an interest analysis and the more traditional lex situs approach, which focused on the location where a particular transaction took place. This Note argues that the Second Circuit misconstrued prior New York case law in its application of the interest analysis without regard to the lex situs. The Second Circuit's analysis created uncertainty and unpredictability in New York choice of law rules, and New York needs a revised choice of law rule for property conflicts that gives both predictability and nuance to the law post-Bakalar. This Note proposes a return to an interest analysis that places particular emphasis on the location of the property transfer at issue in the case. Such a rule would lead to more predictable results, since the law of the transaction location would typically apply, but it would also give judges discretion to weigh other relevant factors.

Student Note on the Visual Artists Rights Act

A part of the installation under dispute between Mass. MoCA and Christopher Buchel 

Elizabeth M. Bock has a student note in  the Michigan Law Review on the Visual Artists Rights Act. From the Introduction:

In 2010, the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit confronted the novel question of when moral rights protections vest under the Visual Artists Rights Act. In Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation, Inc. v. Büchel, the First Circuit determined that the protections of the Visual Artists Rights Act begin when a work is “created” under the Copyright Act. This Note argues that this decision harms moral rights conceptually and is likely to result in unpredictable and inconsistent decisions. This Note proposes instead that these statutory protections should vest when an artist determines that his work is complete and presents it to the public. This standard is more consistent with the history of moral rights. Additionally, public access is necessary to justify a treatment of art different from that of other types of property, and it is a more essential component of moral rights than an artist’s feelings of connection to his work. Finally, the legislative intent behind the Visual Artists Rights Act and the reasoning in previous judicial decisions are more accurately reflected by a public disclosure standard. Utilizing “creation” as a vesting point for moral rights is not supported by the history of the Visual Artists Rights Act and will result in uncertainty and inconsistency in future decisions.

Wang on the Waverley System for Art Export in the UK

Vivian Wang has written an article "Whose Responsibility? The Waverley System, Past and Present"($) in the most recent issue of the International Journal of Cultural Property:

This article explores the history and present operation of the Waverley system, the United Kingdom's art export policy established in 1952. A key component of the article is its attempt to illuminate the little-known story surrounding the birth of the system, which has been pieced together using treasury and Board of Trade papers held in the National Archives. The article then examines, both qualitatively and quantitatively, how responsibility for the system has evolved. The main pattern that emerges is the progressive detachment of the treasury: Although it spearheaded the formation of the Waverley system in 1952, today it is much more removed, in terms of administration and attitude, from the system.

Update on Wednesday's Art Crime Panel

Wednesday's panel at the British Society of Criminology was very engaging, and would have garnered a great deal of attention among cultural heritage scholars. But I'm sad to report that I've had considerably more folks email me to ask about the presentation than were actually present at the presentations.

Lucky for us, all of the papers we were discussing are published (or in my case will be soon).

My presentation was based on a forthcoming article in the International Journal of Cultural Property on the Treasure Act and the Portable Antiquities Scheme. I'll shamelessly self-promote that when I have a copy available.

Simon Mackenzie's paper is: "Performative Regulation: A Case Study in How Powerful People avoid Criminal Labels" British Journal of Criminology 2008 48(2):138-153.

Carolyn Shelbourn's presentation was based on a few articles:


Shelbourn, C "Time crime" - looting of archaeological resources and
the criminal law in England and the United States [2008] Criminal
Law Review, 204-213.

Shelbourn, C. Protecting Archaeological Resources In The United
States: Some Lessons For Law And Practice In England? [2007] Art
Antiquity and Law, 259-278.

Shelbourn C, Bringing The Skeletons Out Of The Closet? The Law and
Human Remains In Art, Archaeology and Museum Collections [2006] Art,
Antiquity and Law 179-198.

These two presentations were excellent and I enjoyed them a great deal. One problem with the current state of Heritage Law Scholarship, is that many of the best work is in specialty journals that can be hard to find. I think in particular a lot of the work by UK academics is underutilized by American authors because they don't know about it. I'm working on a project which should help to correct a lot of those problems, and I'll have a lot more to say about that in a few weeks hopefully.

Some of the journals, in particular Art, Antiquity and Law are not available electronically as far as I am aware. This is a real shame, and I think more authors should consider putting their work online so it can be accessed via sites like SSRN and others (or those journals need to consider putting stuff online). There are tradeoffs perhaps, and some Journals may not like stuff being given away, but I don't see much point in writing articles if people are unaware of them or don't read them.

Have American Museums Initiated "Real Change"?

Lee Rosenbaum has a very interesting post detailing her thoughts of the "Return of Cultural Objects" conference held in Athens this week. She participated in the panel titled "Museums, Sites and Cultural Context", and described her own presentation as follows:

[I] lampooned (and occasionally praised) strategies used in labeling and installing antiquities by American museums, which often have scant information about the archaeological context of objects in their collections. I was struck by the contrast between American labels and those at Athens' National Archaeological Museum, where almost every object is accompanied by information on where it was found.

I ended by championing the view that I share in common with my hosts, singling out two examples from U.S. museums that fit the Parthenon marbles theme---ancient objects that had been fragmented and should be reassembled through the amicable cooperation of the different owners.

However she expressed a more unpopular view when she argued, in sharp contrast to Ricardo Elia, that "there had been substantial recent changes in American museums' antiquities-collecting policies, which had been implemented to varying degrees." It's great to get this kind of quick reaction to the discussion. As to the substance of the claim, whether there has been real change, I think Rosenbaum is probably right, but only for a limited number of museums. A couple institutions, the Getty and the Indianapolis Museum of Art have very strict acquisition policies that are the gold-standard. However these kinds of policies are still voluntary, and there are a number of other institutions who are still dragging their feet. Look to the recent raids in California of LACMA and other institutions for evidence of a failure to reform. Ultimately, both Elia and Rosenbaum are correct, depending on which institutions they might be discussing.

This calls to mind the recent string of repatriations from North American institutions, which can be seen as responses to earlier acquisition policies which may have been lacking. Stacey Falkoff, a third-year law student at Brooklyn Law School has published an interesting student note, Mutually-Beneficial Repatriation Agreements: Returning Cultural Patrimony, Perpetuating the Illicit Antiquities Market in 16 Brooklyn Journal of Law and Policy 265 (2007). She does a great job of describing and compiling the recent string of repatriations, and draws some conclusions. She argues two things essentially, that these Mutually Beneficial Repatriation Agreements (MBRAs) actually perpetuate the illicit trade by mitigating the damage which these institutions suffer when a repatriation takes place, thereby making it easier for museums to acquire potentially-looted objects, and second they hamper the formation of judicial precedent utilizing international conventions.

Certain aspects of these MBRAs may be questioned, however she doesn't do a good enough job showing how the judicial interpretation may be needed, and she falls into the trap many student notes have of relying too much on secondary sources and other articles. I would give the piece high marks for thoroughly analyzing these recent agreements, and its well-researched as far as many of these secondary sources.

I'd argue the law may be complex in this area, but more judicial interpretation is not necessarily needed. I would come to a different conclusion. I think these repatriation agreements are a good thing, and I certainly think the Met will think twice before acquiring another "orphan" such as the Euphronios Krater, which was seen as suspicious when it was acquired.

US Criminal Penalties and Antiquities

To a casual observer, the recent searches in California would perhaps indicate that American criminal prosecutions and investigations can have a substantial impact on the illicit trade in antiquities. I certainly think they are a welcome sign, and hope that more of them will be supported by investigators and prosecutors. However, that investigation took five years to materialize, and there is still no indication if there will be any arrests. It certainly seems likely, but even this dramatic show of force and investigative might will not, I think, end or even put a substantial dent in the illicit trade. The current regulatory framework in both nations of origin and in market states puts far too much pressure on customs agents, prosecutors, and investigators.

At least that's what I argue in my now-available article in the Cardozo Arts and Entertainment Law Journal, WHY U.S. FEDERAL CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR DEALING IN ILLICIT CULTURAL PROPERTY ARE INEFFECTIVE, AND A PRAGMATIC ALTERNATIVE. 25 Cardozo Arts & Ent. L. J. 597-695 (2007)

The pragmatic alternative is the approach in England and Wales with its Treasure Act, Portable Antiquities Scheme, and limited export restrictions. This legal framework and attendant cultural policy is unique, in that it effectively incentivizes obeying the relevant cultural heritage laws. It adopts a carrot and stick approach, while many nations use too much of the stick. I argue that the criminal penalties can be brought to bear in cases of clear and egregious violations, or where there are a great deal of investigative resources available. Such was the case in the California searches, in which an undercover agent posed as a buyer. However, it took five years of investigations, and it's still not clear what the result of these investigations are.

The image above is an Egyptian antiquity which Jonathan Tokeley-Parry bought and sold to Frederick Schultz, who later sold it for $1.2 million in 1993. It's an image of 18th Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III (ca. 1403-1354 B.C.). Tokeley dipped the sculpture in clear plastic and painted it to resemble a cheap tourist souvenir. I discuss prosecutions of both men, which took place in England and the US respectively in the article. A lot of articles discuss the Schultz prosecution, but surprisingly no articles have discussed in any real detail the corresponding prosecution of Tokeley-Parry in England, which I think is key to understanding the international nature of the illicit trade, and the kind of complex multinational criminal investigation which is difficult where criminal investigation and prosecution are time-consuming and expensive. Not to mention the substantial pressures of other and often more-pressing matters such as drugs, violent crime, terrorism and the like.

I would be quite eager to hear any comments or reactions to the piece at derek.fincham "@" gmail.com.

A Call for Antiquities Leasing

Peter Wendel, a Law Professor at Perpperdine University has written an interesting new article in the most recent edition of the Fordham Law Review, Protecting Newly Discovered Antiquities: Thinking Outside the "Fee Simple" Box, 76 Ford. L. Rev. 1016 (2007). A .pdf version is available here. Here's the abstract:

Newly discovered antiquities are “mixed goods.” They have a physical component (the object itself) and an intangible component (the archeological and historical information associated with the discovery). This dual nature justifies government intervention into the market, not to capture the positive externalities associated with the antiquity, but to minimize the negative externalities associated with the law of finders. When the typical finder excavates an antiquity, its historical and archeological information is severely damaged, if not destroyed. In response to this problem, source countries have enacted state ownership/retention statutes. These laws, however, have their own negative externalities. They create incentives for finders to turn to the black market to secure financial compensation and to destroy the historical and archeological information to make it more difficult to catch them. This raises the issue of which is worse: market failure or government intervention failure?

Source countries need to create a stronger incentive for finders to report their finds. In theory, this is easy: Pay the finders more. In practice, this is difficult because source countries tend to be antiquities-rich but revenue-poor. A possible solution is a “possessory estate and future interest approach” to newly discovered antiquities. If the finder reports the find, he receives a transferable term of years and the source country receives the future interest. A transferable term of years creates an incentive for the finder to go public with the find—the finder can profit from his or her discovery. The source country receives ultimate ownership of all newly discovered antiquities at minimal cost (Western museums will be the likely purchasers; they will pay for the cost of creating the incentive). A possessory estate and future interest approach could help end the current feud between source countries and Western museums, two entities that should work together to secure and protect newly discovered antiquities, not waste resources fighting each other.

It's an interesting approach. Wendel justifies his claim by using a law and economics rationale. What he's advocating is a kind of antiquities leasing, similar in concept to the practice in both England and Wales, and Scotland of rewarding finders. He starts from the position that the strong source regulation of nationalizing antiquities and prohibiting their export does not work. I think most can agree the current legal regime is not working. He then advocates giving finders a kind of limited temporary right, known in the Anglo-American legal system as a "possessory estate" and a "future estate" or ultimate vesting right would go to the source nation. That would allow finders of antiquities to profit off their discoveries, while allowing the source nation to ultimately receive ownership of the object.

In essence he's making an interesting claim for the use of antiquities leasing and a renewal of the idea of partage, the traditional practice whereby foreign archaeologists would get to take a portion of the discovered objects back to their European or N. American institutions. It's a pragmatic compromise, and one that may work well in practice. I envision substantial hesitation on the part of source nations to enacting such a system though.

I would welcome a discussion of the merits of this idea in the comments section.

Forthcoming Article on Federal Criminal Penalties for Dealing in Illicit Cultural Property

I have posted my new manuscript on SSRN: Why Federal Criminal Penalties for Dealing in Illicit Cultural Property are Ineffective, and a Pragmatic Alternative. It will be published in the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal this fall. Pictured at right is Egon Schiele's Portrait of Wally which has been locked away in storage for 8 years due to a protracted forfeiture dispute. Here is the abstract:

There have been many articles on this subject in recent years, and I add to the discourse in two important ways. First, I attempt to unpack the values at work in US federal criminal penalties for buying and selling illicit cultural property. The illicit trade in cultural property may be the third largest behind narcotics and weapons. I look at the various stakeholders which formulate cultural property policy and look at why their fundamental differences of opinion are producing an ineffective regulatory framework. A number of recent articles have dealt with this subject, however the discussion about what the law should be doing has prevented a discussion of the practical effect of the status quo. I hope my analysis will further the debate by showing that the current criminal penalties are not producing satisfactory results. Second, I show how a pragmatic approach to cultural property has worked well in the United Kingdom and how such an approach could be adopted in the US. This would give real effect to the federal criminal regulation of cultural property. The art and antiquities market lacks transparency at present. Until this trade begins to effectively distinguish between licit and illicit cultural objects, the theft, looting and destruction of historical sites will surely continue. I hope my discussion of the UK experience can bring attention to the illicit trade in cultural property and the criminal response in the US.

I would be delighted to hear any comments or reactions to the piece.