Thinking About the Elgin Marbles: Critical Essays on Cultural Property, Art and Law (Hardcover)

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This book begins with a critical re-examination of the rival Greek and British claims to the Elgin Marbles. That case study identifies the questions that still dominate the growing international debate about cultural property policy and are explored in subsequent essays: Why do people care about cultural property? Is cultural nationalism a sound organizing principle for dealing with cultural property questions? Or is it a relic of 19th-century romanticism, kept alive by the power of Byron's poetry? How can cultural nationalism be rationalized with the idea that works of art and antiquities are "the cultural heritage of all mankind?" What alternative ways are there of thinking about cultural property policy and law? How may the contending interests of source nations, market nations, archaeologists and ethnologists, museums, collectors and the art and antiquiti