ICRA Spotlight: Curatorial, digital and legal perspectives on catalogues raisonnés and spoliated art: an open question?

How do museums go about checking the provenance of a) Nazi looted art and b) non-European looted art? What (legal and reputational) risks do museums run by cataloguing such material and making it available online? Should problematic looted art or ‘red list’ works ever be included in catalogue raisonnés? How often do we find out about such works through legal claims? Does Native American art raise different issues from a curatorial and legal perspective? In what ways can the legal world work in tandem with museums to mitigate the risks associated with cataloguing looted art?

ICRA’s next Spotlight discussion will explore these questions and others from the perspective of #museumcurators, #arthistorians and #artlawyers. Frances Fowle @francesalicefowle, Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh and author of The Art Market and the Museum, will be in discussion with our distinguished panellists: Victoria Reed, Senior Curator for Provenance at Boston Museum of Fine Arts; Nick O’Donnell (Sullivan & Worcester), specialist in cultural property and author of A Tragic Fate: Law and Ethics in the Battle Over Nazi-Looted Art; and cultural heritage lawyer Kate Fitzgibbon, specialist in Central Asian Art and author of Native American Art and the Law.

📷 An American 3rd Army soldier inspects looted art found at the Schloßkirche in Ellingen, Germany, April 24, 1945. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), National Archives at College Park, MD, USA.