Who Owns the Past?

Legal and Ethical Dilemmas in Cultural Property. Conversation with Max Zidel and Thomas Touchie.

Reservation required: rsvp@primolevicenter.org (indicate the full name(s) of guests and event’s title).

Few debates in art and heritage law are as polarizing as those involving the “ownership” and “return” of cultural property, the category of objects that communities regard as manifestations of their history and identity. The value of these objects may be symbolic, aesthetic, or religious, and they range from monuments known the world over to objects claimed by only a few.

Public discourse and legal frameworks for cultural property tend to center on looting and trafficking. But the headlines obscure more difficult questions: what is the relationship between a community and the relics it views as part of its history? To what extent is this relationship real or imagined? Most claims to cultural objects come with a set of competing interests, pitting the desire for public access against claims of exclusive control. The law is a limited tool in this area and these debates are not purely legal: they involve big questions of ethics, identity, and political philosophy.

In this talk, we will consider a few prominent cultural objects, like the ongoing dispute over the Parthenon Marbles and the recent record-breaking sale of the Kiddush Cup of Joy, and ask: Should the artifacts of history be owned? And if so, by whom, on what basis, and to what end?

About the speakers

Max Zidel and Thomas Touchie are art and cultural property lawyers based in New York and partners at Studio Legal LLP, where they advise artists, foundations, and cultural institutions, among others. Both studied comparative law in the civil and common law traditions at McGill University. They are particularly interested in the legal and ethical issues surrounding cultural property, national heritage, tourism, and the relationship between nation states and non-state communities.