American Council For Cultural Policy - Publications

Publications

ACCP Advisory Board member Kate Fitz Gibbon, who served on the Cultural Property Advisory Committee to the US President from 2000—2003, has recently edited a book entitled Who owns the past: Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law (Rutgers University Press 2005), which mostly features contributors affiliated with ACCP (e.g. William Pearlstein, Shelby White, Kate Fitz Gibbon etc.), and intends to propagate the legitimacy of "the ability of museums and private collectors to own art from other countries" in the public opinion. Jean M. Borgatti (Clark University) published a favorable account of this book on H-Net reviews. According to Borgatti, the book in the overall sense critiques what they call "retentive cultural nationalisms" of "source-nations" who insist that archaeological artifacts should remain in the country of origin. The authors of the book present themselves as "cultural internationalists" who consider ancient artifacts as works of art that need to be circulated (in the antiquities market, Western museums, among Western collectors) to promote a "cultural understanding".

Cultural property is internationally protected by the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property.