Cultural heritage is a crucial component that plays a fundamental role in defining an individual’s identity and advancing the protection of his or her human rights. Reinforcing cultural distinctions and human differences are significant and therefore recognized in Islam. This article enhances the understanding of an Islamic approach to cultural heritage and human rights through the lens offered by three examples: the right to education, freedom of religion, and the right to development. The discussion of the protection of cultural heritage in Islam is essential because Islam is one of the legal sources in many Muslim states, and, therefore, the examination of its intersection with international law could enhance the protection of cultural heritage and promote human rights in the Islamic world. The article develops principles of cultural heritage protection that are in conformity with international law. These principles are the promising common ground for the possibility of universal cultural heritage policy. Despite the fact that there is no clear reference to the notion of cultural heritage in Islamic teaching, this article shows that principles of the protection of cultural heritage are established.

Pandemics creep up on us slowly, and without our suspecting, while we are distracted. Likewise, human experience shows that they recede gradually and without our noticing. For those in the eye of its storm—those that experience their devastating impact firsthand without the hope of an end in sight—they touch and shape their daily lives and their societies, in big and small ways. History shows, that across millennia, pandemics throw a harsh light on existing cleavages in societies and shortcomings in their organization; fuel deliberation, agitation, and the search for new ideas; and accelerate or bring about change. There is no reason to believe the effect of the pandemic that is presently affecting every continent will not follow a similar path.

This article discusses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement on the arts and cultural sector in the United States, placing the 2020 crises in the context of the United States’s historically decentralized approach to supporting the arts and culture. After providing an overview of the United States’s private, locally focused history of arts funding, we use this historical lens to analyze the combined effects of the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement on a single metropolitan area – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We trace a timeline of key events in the national and local pandemic response and the reaction of the arts community to the Black Lives Matter movement, arguing that the nature of these intersecting responses, and their fallout for the arts and cultural sector, stem directly from weaknesses in the United States’s historical approach to administering the arts. We suggest that, in the context of widespread organizational vulnerability caused by the pandemic, the United States’s decentralized approach to funding culture also undermines cultural organizations’ abilities to respond to issues of public relevance and demonstrate their civic value, threatening these organizations’ legitimacy.

This article reflects on the arguments that heritage is as much about people as it is about places and objects. It is focused on Syria and based on a doctoral research project. The article investigates how heritage is approached by both “civil society” groups and extremist religious groups in Syria. It argues that the utilization of heritage by these groups offers learning lessons and examples of people-centered, socially innovative, and future-oriented heritage practices. The article suggests that the heritage community’s efforts in conflict contexts should be less about preservation and more about embracing change and finding creative ways to manage the transformation process from a pre-conflict society to a post-conflict society. In other words, they should tackle issues that matter to conflict-affected people, improve the quality of their life, and increase their horizons of hope and opportunities in assembling better futures.

Most private international laws do not address cultural property specifically but, instead, apply the general lex rei sitae rule also to artifacts. Legal scholarship has revealed the flaws of the rigid application of the lex rei sitae principle to cultural goods and has proposed alternative connecting factors, such as the lex originis principle, to prevent forum and law shopping in this field. Reacting to the criticisms, some of the more recent private international law codifications have decided on the adoption of specific rules on stolen and illegally exported cultural goods that combine the lex rei sitae and the lex originis rules and provide room for the parties’ autonomy. This article draws the conclusion that these more recent legislative solutions do not necessarily promote legal certainty and predictability with regard to the governing law and are far from being a Holy Grail for the conflict of laws of cultural property, whether on a national level or within the European Union.

“Sleepers” are artworks or collectibles that are undervalued because one or more characteristics go unrecognized. This article discusses 12 sleepers that have been sold at auction on the antiquity market since 2007 whose attribution as antiquities were originally overlooked, either accidentally or deliberately. The objects are presented in the context of a theoretical framework describing both the legal and economic incentives to perform due diligence and to reveal, or “awaken,” a sleeper antiquity. The theory implies that sleepers may arise for several reasons, and the case studies are grouped accordingly. Most pressingly, the analysis identifies two ways in which sellers are disincentivized to be transparent about an object’s identity: when they can exploit legal loopholes to deliberately misattribute an antiquity and mediate export and when they can hide disagreement about an object’s authenticity to mediate its sale. Placing the case studies in the broader market context, we highlight particular areas that should be addressed by policy or regulatory reform. The analysis also has wider applications to other forms of art.

Cultural restitution in international law typically aims to restore cultural property to the state of origin. The experience of World War II raised the question of how to adapt this framework to deal with states that persecuted cultural groups within their own borders. Nazi Germany’s persecution of Jews and its attempt to destroy their cultural heritage began before the war and was carried out systematically throughout the war in the conquered territories. After the war, the Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin advocated for the recognition of the new crime of genocide and, in particular, its cultural dimensions. Jewish organizations also argued that cultural destruction should be seen as an integral component of the crime of genocide and that the remedy of cultural restitution should be part of the effort to rehabilitate the injured group, but their efforts to gain recognition in the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg for the unique harm suffered by the Jews were unsuccessful. This article discusses an innovative approach developed by Jewish jurists and scholars in the late 1940s and 1950s, according to which heirless cultural property was returned to Jewish organizations as trustees for the Jewish people. Though largely forgotten in the annals of law, this approach offers a promising model for international law to overcome its statist bias and recognize the critical importance of cultural heritage for the rehabilitation of (non-state) victim groups.

This article traces the provenance and migration of a painting by Jan van Goyen (1595–1656), River Landscape with a Swineherd, from the Jacques Goudstikker Collection and now in Gdańsk Muzeum Narodowe. After the “red-flag sale” of the Goudstikker Collection in July 1940 to German banker Alois Miedl, and then to Hermann Göring, this painting—after its sale on Berlin’s Lange Auction in December 1940 to Hitler’s agent Almas-Dietrich—was returned to Miedl-Goudstikker in Amsterdam. Miedl then sold it (with two other Dutch paintings) to the Nazi Gauleiter of Danzig, Albert Forster, among many wartime Dutch acquisitions for the Municipal Museum (Stadtmuseum). Evacuated to Thuringia and captured by a Soviet trophy brigade, it thus avoided postwar Dutch claims. Returned to Poland from the Hermitage in 1956, it was exhibited in the Netherlands and the United States (despite its Goudstikker label). Tracing its wartime and postwar odyssey highlights the transparent provenance research needed for Nazi-era acquisitions, especially in former National Socialist (NS) Germanized museums in countries such as Poland, where viable claims procedures for Holocaust victims and heirs are still lacking. This example of many “missing” Dutch paintings sold to NS-era German museums in cities that became part of postwar Poland, raises several important issues deserving attention in provenance research for still-displaced Nazi-looted art.

According to the Syrian philosopher T. Tizini (1934–2019), the dilemma of authenticity heritage in the Arab world has lost its factual conceptualization. While its societal and ideological issues have been rightly discussed, its technical aspects have been handled only superficially. In this article, I review the deep interconnectivities between the societal and technical aspects of the term “authenticity” and the reconstruction of the damaged architectural heritage in Syria after years of a devastating war. I suggest that any postwar reconstruction raises a central contradiction: rebuilding an element from the past in the present. While the destroyed physical fabrics might be reconstituted, the setting that gave them value and meaning can never be reestablished. For that reason, preserving the “authenticity” in the wide significance of the term seems unrealistic in the context of reconstructed heritage. Nevertheless, what several Syrian scholars and politicians describe as “authenticity by creativity” might be a possible outcome.

Economists, political scientists, and journalists around the world have suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic will have long-term effects on twenty-first-century global society. As a precipitating factor in the final collapse of the post-1945 world order, the pandemic has been seen as an epochal turning point in human history. This article will examine the long-term effects that the pandemic may have on the protection and promotion of cultural heritage, which has become a major economic and political undertaking in the post-World War II era, with earlier roots in elite aesthetics and the rise of mass tourism in the nineteenth century. This article will identify some dramatic changes in economic activity and politics that may transform the social role of cultural heritage in the coming decades.

Africa as a continent has been hit by the coronavirus – the COVID-19 pandemic – as have many parts of the world. Many African Union (AU) member states were badly hit by the virus, while others were only mildly impacted. The arts, culture, and heritage sectors have been severely hit by the pandemic. Fortunately, in many countries in Africa, arts, culture, and heritage were placed at the heart of strategic priorities at the national, regional, and continental levels of combating COVID-19.

Intangible cultural heritage elements are shared across state borders. In many instances, states join in multinational nominations to inscribe the heritage element in a way that reflects this reality. But, at times, states are unwilling or unable to cooperate in a mutual nomination that reflects the shared nature of the heritage element. The consequence of this is that heritage elements can then be nominated by individual states without any reflection of the multinational or cross-border nature of the element; thus leaving the heritage elements shorn of this aspect of their nature. The current international heritage legal regime, through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, does not adequately acknowledge or address this problem. This article, through a case study of the successful nomination by Azerbaijan of the horseback game of chovqan, examines the causes and consequences of these “fractured resemblances.” It analyzes the links between cultural heritage, conflict, and the use of heritage as a form of soft power. It focuses on the use of single-state inscription as a soft-power means of obtaining international prestige and support and the resultant effects on shared cultural heritage elements. From this, suggestions for changes to international heritage laws for the inscription of cultural heritage are suggested to accommodate the reality of the connection between cultural heritage, conflict, and power and to avoid the occurrence of “fractured resemblances” of heritage shared across state lines.

In an era when war, acts of terror, and the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change loom large in the public conscience, the conservation community is grappling with the associated loss of the historic built environment and potential responses. But the built environment—at least some aspects of it—is becoming progressively obsolete due to environmental and social changes. Coastal sea-level rise, inefficient resource and land use, and the role of the built environment in perpetuating social exclusion raise questions about the potential value of destruction and the opportunities it affords for reframing spatial memory and historical narrative in more just and sustainable ways. The heritage field’s preoccupation with the physical, place-based fabric will be challenged in the face of this obsolescence, compelling a reexamination of attitudes toward destruction and reconstruction. This article borrows loosely from Joseph Schumpeter’s economic concept of creative destruction to explore the ways in which both innovation and new lenses on history and memory may be borne of change, loss, and obsolescence. Using the discourse surrounding past and contemporary North American cases, it examines some fundamental ideas regarding capital in the built environment and the economic value of destruction. It also explores the negative social consequences of destruction and the historical influence cum perspective of the heritage enterprise and posits potentially positive values and opportunities engendered through destruction. Finally, it reimagines how approaches to reconstruction by the heritage field may contribute to more socially just and sustainable futures.

This article unfolds around the controversial case of Georgia’s eleventh-century Bagrati Cathedral, which represents the only site to be removed from the World Heritage List as a result of its full-scale reconstruction. After its destruction in armed conflict by the end of the seventeenth century, the first conservation-restoration works on the monument were carried out in the 1950s. In 1994, partially reconstructed but still without a roof, Bagrati Cathedral had no issues in meeting the conditions of authenticity when the nomination was made for inscription in the World Heritage List. The conflict arose further when the conservation experts did not endorse the state party’s intention to fully rebuild the cathedral, notwithstanding the fact it was stated to be crucial for its functional continuity. The International Council on Monuments and Sites and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization took the view that this scale intervention would compromise the cathedral’s outstanding universal value and authenticity. This article offers a closer look at the decision-making process, from the nomination to the delisting of Bagrati Cathedral, and analyzes the factors contributing to the conflicting interpretations of the monument’s fundamental values among stakeholders. It addresses the issues from a broader perspective to include the historical-cultural background of Georgia and local approaches to preserving the religious sites, which tend to be overlooked in the discourse.

The last decade or so has seen a fundamental shift in Aboriginal cultural heritage law in Australia. A number of subnational jurisdictions in Australia have undergone major reforms to their Aboriginal heritage legislation. Other subnational jurisdictions are currently in the reform process or have promised reform in coming years. We use the latest (and, at the time of writing, ongoing) process to reform Aboriginal heritage legislation in the state of New South Wales (NSW) to explore some of the legal issues and themes emanating from the Australian experience. The NSW example is a useful case study for thinking about how minority heritage regulation can not only serve broader social movements but also undercut some of its own possibilities. We argue that even law that is ostensibly in place to promote the control of communities over their own heritage can cause difficult balancing acts that may default to a dependency path and effectively detract from its own projected goals.

In March 2013, the Barbier-Mueller collection of pre-Columbian art was auctioned at Sotheby’s Paris. This event ended with the sale of half of the works offered and generated a confrontation between six of the countries of origin of the artifacts, which were absolutely opposed to the sale, and the Sothebys’ Parisian branch. This article, taking the case described above as a reference, intends to analyze the ethical considerations and lawfulness implied in the buying and selling of cultural property at auction. With this purpose in mind, the arguments held by both parties in this disagreement are analyzed. At the same time, the efficacy of national laws, international conventions, and regulations is considered, mainly with reference to the use of principles and ethical codes that seem to be applied when the law has no jurisdiction.

Natural and human disasters continue to destroy historic urban fabrics worldwide. While residents would often like to see their cities rebuilt “as they were,” most scholars of heritage fiercely reject identical reconstructions by arguing either that they are “fake” simulations, or that they epitomize undemocratic urbanization processes. Challenging these arguments, I first draw from literature on theming to argue that it is precisely “fakeness” that allows people to construct a sense of authenticity in rebuilt urban spaces. Next, I show how preoccupations with participation and justice can paradoxically lead professionals to advance the same universalistic, undemocratic heritage approach that they claim to contest. By enabling diverse people to negotiate a sense of the past, confront each other, and share new aspirations for the future, identical reconstructions are heritage as much as, if not more than, other “historic” urban fabrics.

The revitalization of fermentation projects during COVID-19 raises questions about the preservation of the pandemic’s material and ephemeral effects – a topic that heritage policy is well equipped to engage. These activities also emphasize the necessity of engaging with heritage practices as a kind of care, encompassing both methods of safekeeping and practices of empathy. In addition, heritage ferments prove “good to think” around themes of loss and preservation, the interpretation of novel viruses through traditional food practices, and the coupling of heritage to microbes. Connecting microbes with heritage allows us to consider points of overlap: as bearers of patrimony with cultural and material lineages, as central to heritage tastes, and as open to geographical indications or other protections to further a kind of microbial resource management. Despite the pandemic’s devastating impact, consideration of heritage ferments points to both emancipatory and constraining outcomes for our post-pandemic future.