2022/23 Academic Year

‘Art Law’ is a specialized and sometimes very lucrative area of practice, and an emerging area of theory and scholarship. It is the body of law, involving numerous disciplines, that protects, regulates and facilitates the creation, use and marketing of art. While art law is not a separate jurisprudence or legal doctrine that applies to all matters vital to artists, purchasers, sellers, museums, dealers and everyone involved in the art world, these matters increasingly receive specialized legal treatment by statute, treaty, regulation or case law.

In this course, we will look at some of the theory of art and law, taking both a practical overview of the area, and a scholarly and interpretive approach to the issues that arise. We will explore the important ethical and legal aspects in the creation, sale, collection and display of art and antiquities. We will discuss the regulation of the art market by focusing on issues such as authenticity, attribution, restoration, money laundering, and stolen art. We will consider the recent developments in addressing the restitution of art taken during the Nazi era and look at the efforts made in the UK, Europe and the US to assess ownership and reframe legal principles (particularly statutes of limitation) in order to restitute artworks. We will also address the matter of museum loans and the cross-border movement of art in this context. Finally, we will consider the obligations that owners might have to ‘their’ art. Several experts will participate in this course to share their practical experience and teach about their field of expertise.