Dr Tatiana Flessas, NAB 7.27

This course is primarily intended for LLM students and MSc Law, Anthropology adn Society. Students on other degree programmes within LSE, or in some cases undergraduates on the LLB, may take the course subject to the approval of the course coordinator.

This course looks at the emerging areas of cultural property and heritage law from legal, social theoretical and practice-oriented perspectives. It begins with an overview of existing and emerging cultural property and heritage legislation (domestic and international), and then engages in a discussion of specific cases and issues regarding acquisition, ownership, and restitution of antiquities and works of art. The course considers the creation and management of museums and heritage sites, primarily within the UK, but also including international initiatives under the auspices of the UN and UNESCO. Finally, practitioners in the areas of art and antiquity law, museum and auction house professionals, archaeologists, and art experts will be contributing to the seminars on the emerging legal issues in this area.

Topics to be covered include the origins of cultural property law, the problems in defining cultural property and heritage, current issues and cases, and the problems that arise in regulating markets in art, antiquities and cultural artefacts. We will be looking at international and national legislation in the field, in particular the development of cultural property legislation in the 20th century and emerging international cultural property and heritage regimes. We will also consider UK domestic initiatives in this area, including new regimes for the protection of culturally-valuable places and objects. Against this legislative background, the course examines important cases in the field of cultural property disputes, problems regarding looting and provenance, and questions of commodification and sale of cultural artefacts and antiquities, including the issues that arise in the operation of the art market (dealers, museums, collectors and auction houses). We consider heritage regimes, and consider how the issues that we've identified throughout the course also arise in the ongoing construction, protection, and (primarily economic) uses of heritage. Along with specialist seminars, the course includes visits to museums and contact with practising experts in the field.

Teaching will consist of 20 two-hour seminars in the MT and LT, and one two-hour seminar in the ST.

Students will be expected to undertake a presentation on the seminars and to submit written work on which they will receive feedback from the course teacher.

Neil Cookson, Archaeological Heritage Law (2000 Barry Rose); John Henry Merryman and Albert E. Elsen, Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts (2002 Kluwer Law International); Lyndel V. Prott & P.J. O'Keefe, Law and the Cultural Heritage Vol 1 (1984 Abingdon); Lyndel V. Prott & P.J. O'Keefe, Law and the Cultural Heritage Vol 3 (1989 Butterworths); J.E. Tunbridge and G.J. Ashworth, Dissonant Heritage:  the management of the past as a resource in conflict (1996 J. Wiley); Norman Palmer, Museums and the Holocaust:  law, principles and practice (2000 Institute of Art and Law); John Henry Merryman, Thinking about the Elgin Marbles:  critical essays on cultural property, art and law (2000 Kluwer Law International); Nick Merriman, Beyond the Glass Case: the past, the heritage and the public in Britain (1991); Jeanette Greenfield, The Return of Cultural Treasures (1989); Richard Prentice, Tourism and Heritage Attractions (1993); G.J. Ashworth and P.J. Larkham, eds. Building a New Heritage: tourism, culture, and identity (1994); Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (1997); Patrick J O'Keefe, Trade in Antiquities: reducing destruction and theft (1997); Ismail Serageldin, Ephim Shluger, Joan Martin-Brown, eds. Historic Cities and Sacred Sites: cultural roots for urban futures (2001); Federico Mayor, Memory of the Future (1995); Peter J. Fowler, The Past in Contemporary Society: then, now (1992); David Brett, The Construction of Heritage (1996); Karl Ernest Meyer, The Plundered Past (1974).

The course will be assessed by a three-hour examination in the ST.