Cultural Property Seminar

3 credits · Law School

This seminar explores how the law balances public and private claims over different forms of cultural property, including art, archaeological and paleontological finds, historic buildings and communities, Presidential papers, as well as other objects and practices that implicate national patrimony, indigenous sovereignty, and world heritage. Students will read scholarship and consider case studies on a range of illustrative cultural property topics relating to the duties of museums in collecting, displaying, and resolving disputes over art; black markets in art and archaeology and the use of cultural objects to finance criminal enterprise; colonialism and repatriation; Nazi art looting and Holocaust restitution, and diplomacy and conflict over cultural objects. Over the course of the term, students will research, draft, and revise a paper, which they will present and discuss in class. Enrollment limited. [3]