The repatriation of cultural treasures from museums: are there legal solutions?

The past 20 years have brought a series of high-level requests for the repatriation of important treasures, held in British museums, to their countries of origin.  Latest polls show more than 50% of English public support returning the Parthenon Marbles to Greece.  The Horniman Museum has returned its collection of Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.  There are pending repatriation requests, of various degrees of seriousness, from Egypt, India, and Australia.  In other countries, there have been repatriations based on long-term loans or indeed straight returns.  In this country, it’s more complicated.  This event will discuss repatriation as a historical phenomenon in the context of museum collection development, and as a political problem in the present, and ask whether existing cultural heritage law has a significant role to play in untangling some of these problems.

Speaker:  Dr. Tatiana Flessas

Tatiana Flessas holds a BA in Philosophy from Wellesley College, a JD from Northeastern University School of Law, and an LLM and PhD from the London School of Economics. Before joining LSE, she practiced law in the US and taught at the University of Reading School of Law. Her research interests are in cultural property and heritage law, law and social theory, and law and literature.