During the Age of Imperialism, historical pieces such as the Bust of Nefertiti were taken from their home countries and installed in major museums throughout the world. Leading academics, authors and curators will examine whether these works of art should be returned to their source nations at the “Imperialism, Art & Restitution” conference March 26-27 at the Washington University School of Law.
The conference, sponsored by the law school’s Whitney R. Harris Institute for Global Legal Studies, is free and open to the public, but registration is required. All panel discussions will be held in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom of Anheuser-Busch Hall.
James Cuno, professor and director of the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, will present the conference’s keynote address on the “View from the Universal Museum.”
Talat Halman, professor at Bilkent University in Ankara and former Minister of Culture in Turkey, will respond to Cuno’s lecture with “The View from the Source Nation.”
In addition to the Bust of Nefertiti, housed at the Staatliche Museum in Berlin, panel discussions will focus on the Elgin/Parthenon Marbles at the National Gallery of London and the Code of Hammurabi at the Louvre.
A separate panel will offer critical perspectives on the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), its administration and effectiveness.
NAGPRA, enacted in 1990, provides a process for museums and federal agencies to return Native American cultural items, human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony to lineal descendents, culturally affiliated American Indian tribes, and Native Hawaiian organizations.
Other conference speakers include:
- Willard Boyd – professor of law and president emeritus of the University of Iowa
- Michael Brown – professor at Williams College and author of Who Owns Native Culture?
- Michael Cosmopoulos – the Hellenic Government-Karakas Foundation Professor of Greek Studies and professor of archaeology at the University of Missouri – St. Louis
- John Henry Merryman – the Sweitzer Professor of Law and Affiliated Professor of Art, emeritus, at Stanford University
- Susan Rotroff – the Jarvis Thurston and Mona Van Duyn Professor in the Humanities at Washington University
- Kurt Siehr – professor at the University of Zurich
- William St. Clair – author of Lord Elgin and the Marbles
- Sarantis Symeonoglou – professor of art history and archaeology at Washington University
- David Thomas – curator of the division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, and author of Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archeology, and the Battle for Native American Identity
- Stephen Urice – director of the Project for Cultural Heritage Law & Policy at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Law School
For registration information, contactl Linda McClain at 935-7988 or lmcclain@wulaw.wustl.edu. A conference agenda is available online at http://law.wustl.edu/igls/Conferences/ImperialismArtRestitutionConf04.html
This conference offers 11.1 hours of MCLE credit.