Current Events > IYO, should individuals be able to own old art work/artifacts...

(+) Yeah! (+)

...that wasn't originally obtained legitimately?

like, let's say your great great great-grandfather ransacked some dude's home during a war, against a country that no longer exists, and took jewelry, art, etc. and that stuff was passed on as family heirlooms for generations - after a certain point, should they be considered the family's property, or should they be confiscated and be kept at a museum?

in that scenario, let's say that the the original family who had their stuff stolen died out throughout the years.

or if you were digging a garden in your backyard, and found a bunch of golden coins from the ancient Roman Empire (you have no idea how they got there) - do you think that you should be able to keep them, or should they be kept at some kinda institute, preserved for history, that's also viewable to the public?

edit: *that weren't

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Old coins from a long dead empire is a bit different then stolen artwork.

Is this basically asking if people think you should be allowed to keep art stolen by the Nazis?

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A lot of people do. Private collections are a huge part of preservation. Ideally, qualified individuals would be given limited access to identify and study said artifacts.

Chances are pretty good an intact copy of Beowulf is in a private collection somewhere in Europe, but there are so many documents and so few qualified paleographers that we might never find it.

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If it is legit that the artwork that's stolen belonged to a country that doesn't exist and there are no decendants, then sure by all means keep it

I do think it should be returned to the families of those it belonged to if they are still alive though

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16-BITTER posted...

Museums should get it but owner should be compensated, if only for helping keep it extant

Museums don't have the space to hold everything, even in storage.

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Gamerguymass posted...

Old coins from a long dead empire is a bit different then stolen artwork.

Is this basically asking if people think you should be allowed to keep art stolen by the Nazis?

Switzerland shuffles nervously.

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16-BITTER posted...

I thought this was about stolen art/artifacts specifically, not all privately held art/artifacts.

Provenance is a thorny question when it comes to artifacts. An item might be "found," "stolen" or "preserved" depending on who you ask. On some occasions collections might be refused because there isn't space or manpower to deal with them, then ownership is challenged when something worthwhile (valuable) gets identified.

Source: I used to be a paleographer.

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vigorm0rtis posted...

Provenance is a thorny question when it comes to artifacts. An item might be "found," "stolen" or "preserved" depending on who you ask. On some occasions collections might be refused because there isn't space or manpower to deal with them, then ownership is challenged when something worthwhile (valuable) gets identified.

Source: I used to be a paleographer.

That sounds like a cool job!

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thanks for all of the posts.

it's just something I was thinking about earlier.

Gamerguymass posted...

Is this basically asking if people think you should be allowed to keep art stolen by the Nazis?

nah, I think something like WW2 is too soon, and the answer might be more cut and dry.

I was thinking of something that could have happened hundreds of years ago.

like, a family from Denmark owning stolen art from what's now England, for example.

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even though there were a bunch of good posts in the topic, I'll bump it one more time

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