The Restitution Dialogues

Book Panel Discussion

 Restitution – The Return of Cultural Artefacts by Alexander Herman

Tuesday, February 8, 2022

12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m. – Zoom Webinar

Co-hosted by the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History, Trinity College, Toronto

and the Minerva Center for Human Rights, Tel Aviv University

Alexander Herman, Director of the Institute of Art and Law, has published a new volume on the complex and fascinating topic of the restitution of cultural artifacts. The Graham Centre, and the Minerva Center for Human Rights, at Tel Aviv University, are pleased to sponsor a virtual discussion of this new book.

Alexander Herman will discuss his book, followed by comments from Leora Bilsky of the Minerva Center, Juanita Johnston of the U'mista Cultural Centre at Alert Bay, Jennifer Orange of the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, and Matthias Weller of the Bonn Institute for German and International Civil Procedure. Mayo Moran, Provost of Trinity College, will moderate the webinar.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Debates about the restitution of cultural objects have been ongoing for many decades, but have acquired a new urgency recently with the intensification of scrutiny of European museum collections acquired in the colonial period. Alexander Herman’s fascinating and accessible book provides an up-to-date overview of the restitution debate with reference to a wide range of current controversies.

This is a book about the return of cultural treasures: why it is demanded, how
it is negotiated and where it might lead. The uneven relationships of the past have meant that some of the greatest treasures of the world currently reside in places far removed from where they were initially created and used. Today we are witnessing the ardent attempts to put right those past wrongs: a light has begun to shine on the items looted from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas
and the Pacific, and the scales of history, according to some, are in need of significant realignment.

This debate forces us to confront an often dark history, and the difficult application of our contemporary conceptions of justice to instances from the past. Should we allow plundered artefacts to rest where they lie – often residing there by the imbalances of history? This book asks whether we are entering a new ‘restitution paradigm’, one that could have an indelible impact on the cultural sector - and the rest of the world - for many years to come. It provides essential reading for all those working in the art and museum worlds and beyond.

EVENT SPEAKERS:

Author: Alexander Herman, Director, Institute of Art and Law, London, UK

Welcome:  John Meehan, Director, Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History

Moderator: Mayo Moran, Provost & Vice-Chancellor, Trinity College in the University of Toronto

Panelists:

·       Leora Bilsky, Minerva Center for Human Rights, Tel Aviv University

·       Juanita Johnston, U’mista Cultural Centre, Alert Bay, British Columbia

·       Jennifer Orange, Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Toronto

·       Matthias Weller, Bonn Institute for German and International Civil Procedure

BIOGRAPHIES:

Leora Bilsky is The Benno Gitter Chair in Human Rights and Holocaust Research at the Tel Aviv University faculty of law and the director of the Minerva Center for Human Rights. She clerked at the Israel Supreme Court and earned her L.L.M and J.S.D from Yale Law School. Bilsky is the author of Transformative Justice: Israeli Identity on Trial (University of Michigan Press, 2004) and The Holocaust, Corporations, and the Law: Unfinished Business (University of Michigan Press, 2017). Her main areas of research are law and the Holocaust, transitional justice, international criminal law, feminist legal theory, and the relationship between law, history and memory. Her current research focuses on restitution and cultural genocide. bilskyl@tauex.tau.ac.il

Alexander Herman is Director of the UK-based Institute of Art and Law and co- directs the ‘Art, Business and Law’ LLM developed in partnership with the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary, University of London (UK). He has written, taught and presented on an array of topics in relation to art and cultural property, including on international conventions, museum practice, art collecting and the restitution of cultural objects. His writing has appeared in The Globe & Mail, The National Post, The Art Newspaper and Canadian Art, and he has been quoted widely on art-law topics, including in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Telegraph, ArtNET, Bloomberg and Haaretz. He recently led an Arts Council England project to draft guidance for English museums on the restitution and repatriation of collection items. He is Canadian, with an MA from Trinity College Dublin and a BCL/LL.B from McGill University. Prior to his time at the Institute of Art and Law, he practised law in Montreal and worked for English art-law barrister the late Norman Palmer QC CBE.

Juanita Johnston is the Interim Executive Director for U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay, BC, where she grew up. She is of Weka’yi (Kwakwaka’wakw) and Haida descent on her mother’s side and was adopted in the big house in 1994 by ’Nulis and Gwimolas (Edwin and Vera Newman) and given the name Tłaliłalas. Johnston has worked at U’mista in various capacities since 1989: she has supported membership; maintained and researched collections; contributed to exhibit development; managed the tourism portfolio; coordinated numerous projects including the opening of The Power of Giving in Alert Bay and programming for Die Macht des Schenkens in Dresden, Germany; and is now interim Executive Director. The highlight of her U’mista career remains traveling to traditional villages and other culturally significant sites by boat and helicopter with elders. She has also worked for the UBC Museum of Anthropology, has studied cultural stewardship and museum studies, and authored The Living World: Plants and Animals of the Kwakwaka’wakw. Her most recent success includes increasing capacity at U’mista and hiring all Kwakwaka’wakw employees for all aspects of the cultural centre.  

John Meehan A historian by training, Dr. John Meehan has a BA in History and Russian Studies from McGill University, a diploma in Theology from Magdalen College, Oxford, an MA in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and a PhD in History from the University of Toronto. His publications include The Dominion and the Rising Sun: Canada Encounters Japan, 1929-1941 (winner of the Prime Minister’s Award in Japan) and Chasing the Dragon in Shanghai: Canada’s Early Relations with China, 1858-1952. A former President of Campion College (U of Regina) and the University of Sudbury, he has taught and published on Canadian foreign relations, Asia Pacific studies and relations with Indigenous peoples.

Mayo Moran is Provost and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College, Professor of Law and former Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto.  Her work is at the intersection of private and public law and focuses on the role of law in redressing historic injustice.  Provost Moran has published and lectured extensively on private law, comparative constitutional law, and legal and feminist theory.  Her book, The Problem of the Past and How to Fix It, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press in 2022.  She is also a co-organizer of “The Restitution Dialogues”, a series of transnational conversations about cultural loss and return, the first of which was held in Tel Aviv in December 2019. 

Jennifer Orange is an assistant professor in the Lincoln Alexander School of Law. Prior to that, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Bill Graham Centre for Contemporary International History at the University of Toronto, a member of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and a litigator at Torys LLP. Her interdisciplinary research investigates the ways that cultural institutions support the dissemination and evolution of human rights norms. Her work explains how human rights communities of practice that include both state and non-state actors can promote a human rights culture. Orange is also conducting research on the return of cultural artefacts to Indigenous communities. Orange has written in the areas of international law, constitutional law, human rights, truth and reconciliation, and museology, including publications in Human Rights Quarterly, the UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, and the Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship. She has held a number of fellowships, including a Jackman Humanities Institute-Mellon Fellowship. As of April 2021, Jennifer has been appointed as a part-time member of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal for a 5-year term.

Prof. Dr. Matthias Weller is the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Professor for civil law, art and cultural property law, and one of the two Directors of the Bonn Institute for German and International Civil Procedure (“Institut für deutsches und internationales Zivilverfahrensrecht”).  Prof. Weller’s legal education was at the Universities of Heidelberg and Cambridge, UK (St. John’s College). Later, he was, inter alia, Joseph Story Fellow of Private International Law at the Harvard Law School and worked with an attorney admitted to the bar of the Federal Court of Justice. From 2014 to 2018 he was Vice Dean and Member of the Senate at the EBS University of Wiesbaden, Germany. He joined the Foundation of the German Institute for Art and Law IFKUR e.V. in Heidelberg in 2006, and until 2020 co-chaired and organised the annual “Heidelberg Art Law Conference”. Prof. Weller publishes on private law, art and cultural property law, private international law, international civil litigation and arbitration as well as transnational commercial law. He is a member of the German Arbitration Institution (DIS) and a specialised arbitrator of the Court of Arbitration for Art (CAfA).

Prof. Dr. Matthias Weller is the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Professor for civil law, art and cultural property law, and one of the two Directors of the Bonn Institute for German and International Civil Procedure (“Institut für deutsches und internationales Zivilverfahrensrecht”).  Prof. Weller’s legal education was at the Universities of Heidelberg and Cambridge, UK (St. John’s College). Later, he was, inter alia, Joseph Story Fellow of Private International Law at the Harvard Law School and worked with an attorney admitted to the bar of the Federal Court of Justice. From 2014 to 2018 he was Vice Dean and Member of the Senate at the EBS University of Wiesbaden, Germany. He joined the Foundation of the German Institute for Art and Law IFKUR e.V. in Heidelberg in 2006, and until 2020 co-chaired and organised the annual “Heidelberg Art Law Conference”. Prof. Weller publishes on private law, art and cultural property law, private international law, international civil litigation and arbitration as well as transnational commercial law. He is a member of the German Arbitration Institution (DIS) and a specialised arbitrator of the Court of Arbitration for Art (CAfA).