Stolen Art Restitution Claims and the Exhaustion of Local Remedies: How Foreign-Based Plaintiffs are Able to Succeed Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act

Stolen art restitution claims under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (“FSIA”) present unique procedural issues that implicate the history, purpose, and objectives of the FSIA. At the forefront of these issues are how foreign-based plaintiffs are able to bring suits against foreign governments or foreign citizens in US Federal Courts. Whether these foreign-based plaintiffs must exhaust local remedies in their country of origin is another issue that these kinds of suits typically have courts resolve. This article provides answers to these issues through a historical discussion of the implementation of the FSIA and an analysis of recent case law.     

The Changing Business of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art: Markets,Audiences, Artists,and the Large Art Fairs

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the relationship between the growth of large Australian Aboriginal art fairs and shifts in the fine art market and state policies; audience and art insiders' experiences; and the implications of art fair participation for artists and art centers. In contrast to the traditional gallery model, the art fairs draw buyers and artists together in regional centers, along with families, managers, curators, commentators, administrators, and politicians. Using the assemblages concept, we analyze the emergence of a new engagement that prioritizes social, cultural, and interpersonal aspects of art making and where buyers consume “relational goods” linked to their purchasing context.     

Impacts,Measurements, and Art Policy: Starting the Change Process

The author discusses a survey of companies with art collections in German-speaking countries—Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Drawing on the data collected in the survey, he highlights the differences between two groups of curators currently responsible for corporate art collections, the "new professionals" and the "management administrators." First, organizational changes in corporations that occurred during the "founding boom" of the 1990s had a significant effect on the roles of corporate art managers, introducing the art-educated "new professional" into the process, which before then had been controlled by the corporate-trained "management administrators." Second, the nature, content, and styles of current corporate art collections reflect specific "corporate cultures." Third, the "new professional" corporate art curators purchase contemporary art for their collections at art fairs, a reality that has significant impact on the art market. The author concludes with an analysis of the relationship between these new professional corporate collectors and the contemporary art market by highlighting significant changes in pre- and post-1990 corporate art collections.     

Book reviews

This paper analyzes practices of counter-surveillance—particularly against closed-circuit television systems in urban areas—and theorizes their political implications. Counter-surveillance is defined as intentional, tactical uses, or disruptions of surveillance technologies to challenge institutional power asymmetries. Such activities can include disabling or destroying surveillance cameras, mapping paths of least surveillance and disseminating that information over the Internet, employing video cameras to monitor sanctioned surveillance systems and their personnel, or staging public plays to draw attention to the prevalence of surveillance in society. The main argument is that current modes of activism tend to individualize surveillance problems and methods of resistance, leaving the institutions, policies, and cultural assumptions that support public surveillance relatively insulated from attack.     

Conceptual art and language: introducing a logico-semantic analysis

This article suggests a logico-semantic analysis of Keith Arnatt's Trouser-Word Piece and Victor Burgin's Room, based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's examination of the logical relationship between propositions and the world and M.A.K. Halliday's discussion of social semiotics. It reconsiders the use of language in conceptual art practices from a wider sociological and interdisciplinary perspective, and aims to show how their juxtaposition of different voices within a public context negotiates the space of art as a social space. Focusing on how artworks communicate in context, the following discussion presents the historical as well as the discursive environment in which Arnatt's and Burgin's works are situated and received; moreover, it examines how these works critically manipulate viewing and reading regimes, frameworks of evaluation and patterns of communication in order to create a situation of particular tension between perceptual and conceptual apprehension. In wider terms, this article demonstrates how critically engaged artworks manipulate the conditions of communication by utilizing loan rhetoric (a rhetoric external to the art context) and displace associate meaning in order to challenge the institutionalization of art's production and function. In doing so, they critically stage and contest the power structures that support corresponding hierarchies across producer, audience and mediator, and bring art's social modality into focus. Investigating the manipulation of language in conceptual art, this article proposes a method of analysis that becomes fundamental in studying contemporary multi-modal art production, and in understanding the dialectics of art'But the difficulty is to remove the prejudices communication and critical potential.     

汉魏美学概观

秦汉魏晋是中华审美意识的拓展与细化期。秦汉审美以雄健风流为特点, 集中体现在赋、隶书与画像砖石, 是述旧总体文化背景下之独特审美创造。魏晋审美在实践上开拓出自然审美与生活审美两个新领域, 书法艺术提前进入精品时代; 观念上出现了深入研究艺术创造和欣赏规律的专门理论著作和系统的审美概念体系, 为整个古典审美高峰期的到来打下扎实基础。汉魏美学可为理解后发生时期人类审美史之共性提供有益参照。     

论“先发制人”与“后发制人”在散打战术中的应用

散打是武术中运用踢、打、摔、拿、格、架、挡、截等攻防方法进行有规则的实战的对抗性项目.散手是搏斗运动中的一个分支,在技术和战术上都具有独自特点;因而针对不同类型的比赛和不同类型打法的对手,就应该确定不同的战术内容.文章通过对散打战术的浅析,针对"先发制人"和"后发制人"战术的特点,重点论述了其在散打中的战术作用,为散打的技战术训练提供一定的理论依据.     

死亡意识与艺术活动

死亡意识是人类产生的最后标志。一切人生观、价值观皆源于死亡意识,行为的意义和价值均须置于死亡的天平上加以衡量,人生因有了对死亡的理解和态度而呈现出高下。死亡意识中对永恒与绝对的追问,直指生命与世界的真义与本原。对生存意义的终极追问,使得生命的真实性得以呈现。创造活动基源于人类的自我意识,自我意识的最初表现和核心即死亡意识。创造是对死亡的反抗,是超越死亡的努力。艺术从生存的本真境况出发,将隐藏的生命本质昭示出来,将人的超验的价值内涵昭示出来,让我们在寻求永久依托的过程中,竭力接近生命的永恒。     

浅谈中国传统茶文化

茶文化隶属于中国的饮食文化,是以茶为载体而传播的,体现着物性实质与精神神韵的完美结合,所派生而得的道德体现、礼仪规范和审美内容,如今已成为中国人精神生活中一道亮丽的风景线。     

八音古乐的发展脉络及艺术研究

长期流传在黔西南州布依族地区的八音古乐 ,是布依族特有的中华民族文化艺术瑰宝。由它独特的艺术个性与民族特征韵味 ,显示了顽强的生命力。探索八音古乐的发展脉络及艺术研究 ,具有时代意义与深远意义