Leiden University Student Repository

Kay, Georgia Eidel Miss (2021)

The Polemics of Legitimacy: Museums and the Illicit Art Trade in the United Kingdom

Master thesis | Arts and Culture (MA)

The illicit art trade continues to flourish globally despite mitigative action by authorities worldwide. As such, agencies such as the museum have begun to contribute to the fight against illicit art with novel strategies such as point of entry identification. Despite this, there are widespread accusations against museums, particularly in the United Kingdom, for harbouring large numbers of stolen art within their collections. In order to explore this, this thesis examines the contemporary interaction between the illicit art trade in the United Kingdom and British museums. This is done by analysing the acquisition of objects which lack provenance data from 1933-1945 in the collections of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum alongside the museums' acquisition policies. A small contemporary interaction is found as well as statistically significant effects of mitigative legislation and changes in acquisition policies put in place in recent decades.

Illicit art trade

museums

spoliation's

British Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

Museum

Author

Kay, Georgia Eidel Miss

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Museums and Collections

Supervisors

Tummers, J.C.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en