A great mind, as a barrister he defended numerous cultural property cases

I was very sad to hear yesterday of the death of Professor Norman Palmer.

I have met him numerous times, both at conferences and other events relating to cultural property restitution, as well as sitting on the opposite side of the table from him, as part of the group interviewing a team about their suitability for representing Greece in the case to reunify the Parthenon Sculptures.

Readers of this site may be most familiar with him as part of the team with Geoffrey Robertson and Amal Clooney that met with the Greek Government in 2014. Palmer was also well known within the sphere of cultural property restitution for chairing the Human Remains Working Group, whose work eventually led to the change in UK law allowing the repatriation of human remains to indigenous peoples in Australia and elsewhere.

He advised governments and international bodies on the drafting of new cultural property laws and was instrumental in the resolution of various cultural property disputes. He was also a great supporter of mediation and other out of court settlement methods for cultural property disputes.

Immensely knowledgeable, Norman’s academic credentials added gravitas to any team he was a part of. He will be sadly missed.

Professor Norman Palmer QC

From:
Institute of Art and Law

In Memoriam – Norman Palmer QC CBE
Posted on: October 5, 2016 by Alexander Herman

We are sad to announce that the Institute of Art & Law’s Academic Principal, Norman Palmer QC (Hon) CBE, has passed away. Norman was the guiding light of this organisation ever since its beginnings over twenty years ago. Along with his wife, Ruth Redmond-Cooper, he made the IAL what it is today. He provided countless hours of instruction to hundreds of students and will no doubt be sorely missed by all. His wisdom and intellectual curiosity led to the publication of foundational tomes, including Palmer on Bailment, Art Loans and Museums and the Holocaust, as well as dozens of articles in the area of art and cultural property law.

And some more details about him and his career.
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A few years ago, the law in the UK was changed to allow certain artefacts to be returned to their country of origin.

The 2004 Human Tissue Act had its origins in controlling the unauthorised storage of body parts of deceased patients by hospitals, but section 47 of the act covered a very different, yet tenuously related subject – the repatriation of human remains.

Following a successful campaign by Australian Aboriginal groups, a decision had been made by the British Government to make changes to the law, to allow artefacts that involved human remains (i.e. they were human remains, or part of them was composed from human remains) to be returned to their countries of origin. This change in the law was a major step forward, as for the first time it over-rode the 1963 British Museum Act, opening a new route by which items could be de-accessioned from the institution.

After the need for changes to the law were identified by a working group led by Professor Norman Palmer (who has recently been associated with the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles), the Museums that held artefacts that might be affected by any change in the law, all wanted to limit any potential losses to their collections. As a result of this, various limitations were invoked within the act. Firstly, there was a 1000 year limit – artefacts older than this were not covered – a move that safeguarded any Egyptian mummies held by Britain’s major museums. The second limitation was a much more major distinction that of bones versus stones. It was argued that bones (i.e. human remains) were one category of artefact, whereas stones (i.e. pretty much everything else that was inanimate) constituted an entirely different category. While there are reasons that human remains should perhaps be seen in a different light, the move was arguably more about safeguarding large tranches of the museum’s collections, than it was about any real ethical distinction.

In the years since the Human Tissue Act came into force, there have been many instances of human remains being returned, from museums all over Britain. The returns have not just been to Australian Aboriginal groups, but also to many other indigenous peoples around the world.

During this time though, the stones versus bones argument never entirely disappeared. Aboriginal groups were pleased with the return of human remains, but to them, many other items in Britain’s museums held equally important cultural significance. The British Museum is now loaning some of the Aboriginal items in its collection to the National Museum of Australia, leading to new claims that some of these items should be returned. As the Aboriginal groups point out, these items tell a story about them and their culture, not a story about England.

Minor successes in this field have already been achieved, such as the Kwakwaka’wakw mask returned on a renewable loan basis, but these have been few and far between. To achieve what the Aboriginal Groups want would require another change in the law. This should not be considered as an insurmountable challenge – a few years after the 2004 Human Tissue Act, MP Andrew Dismore introduced the Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Act, which punched a new hole in the anti-restitution clauses of the British Museum Act – this time allowing the return of items looted during the Nazi Era.

With each new special case, the legitimacy of more artefacts within the British Museum’s collection comes into question, leading to further pressure for changes in the law to give the potential for long running restitution cases such as that of the Parthenon Marbles to be resolved.

Aboriginal bark painting of a barramundi dating from 1861

From:
Guardian

Indigenous leaders fight for return of relics featuring in major new exhibition
Paul Daley
Saturday 14 February 2015 00.03 GMT

When Gary Murray contemplates the thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander objects held in the vaults of the British Museum in London, he strikes a simple analogy.

“All of these things that belong to our people in Australia – they don’t tell a story about the Queen of England, do they?” he asks.
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Birmingham University has returned various skulls & bone fragments to the Salinan tribe in San Luis, Obispo County, California, where they have been re-buried.

Returns of artefacts involving human remains from institutions in the UK have now become commonplace (although there are still many more cases awaiting consideration). Pressure from the British Museum has made sure that these are differentiated from those that don’t involve human remains. So, whereas once, they said nothing could be returned, when faced with political pressure, they categorised their collection, to allow some of it to be returned, but make no difference to the case for retaining the rest of it. One could cynically argue, that this particularly appealed to them, as they had almost no items in their collection involving human remains (most of those were taken by the Natural History Museum in London when it was split off as a separate institution).

Only certain museums in the UK are covered by the Human Tissue Act, but once these institutions started making returns, the cultural climate shifted, paving the way for many more institutions to follow their lead.

So, the return of human remains is now relatively accepted (as is the one for items looted during the holocaust AKA Nazi Era) – but the campaign still needs to be won for the many other disputed artefacts that have the misfortune in not being in either of these special categories.

From:
Los Angeles Times

Native American skulls repatriated to California from England
How seven skulls from a California tribe got to the University of Birmingham is unclear. But their return appears to be the first event of its kind in the state.
By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times
May 20, 2012

Nobody thought much about the locked metal cabinet in the medical school at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. It was another forgotten fixture in the anatomy department — until a researcher last year found seven skulls with yellowing labels indicating the remains were those of Native Americans from California’s Central Coast.

Earlier this month, the skulls and several bone fragments were boxed and gingerly placed aboard a jet to LAX at London’s Heathrow Airport. In a quiet ceremony, they were reburied in San Luis Obispo County, more than a century after their odyssey began.
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Islanders living in the Torres Strait, between Australia & New Guinea have won their case to have ancestral bones held by London’s Natural History Museum returned.

From:
BBC News

23 November 2011 Last updated at 13:17
Torres Strait islanders reclaim their ancestral bones
By Pallab Ghosh

Representatives of the Torres Strait islanders collected bones of their ancestors from the Natural History Museum in London.

The development is the latest step in a long campaign by the islanders to have the human remains returned to them so they can be properly buried and – in their view, allow the spirits of their ancestors to rest in peace.
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Scotland is due to hand back some more Aboriginal artefacts to Australia following negotiations with Glasgow City Council. This follows earlier previous returns made by museums in Edinburgh.

From:
The Herald (Scotland)

Aboriginal remains reclaimed
Phil Miller, Arts Correspondent
10 Dec 2010

Glasgow’s museums are to return the skeletal remains of three indigenous Australians to their home country.

The executive committee of Glasgow City Council yesterday agreed that the remains, including skulls, be returned to the Australian Government, in the latest of a series of repatriations in the last 10 years.
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The Smithsonian Institute has returned the remains of nine Aborigines to Australia. This follows the numerous recent examples set by museums in the UK who have returned similar remains under the terms of the Human Tissue Act.

From:
The Australian

Ancestral remains returning from US
Lanai Vasek
The Australian
July 05, 2010 12:00AM

THE ancestral remains of nine indigenous Australians will finally return home today after 60 years in a museum in the US.

The remains — taken from their burial places during the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land — were handed back to indigenous representatives at a traditional smoking ceremony in Washington DC over the weekend.
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Following the high profile successes of Australian Aboriginal groups in securing the repatriation of human remains from Britain’s museums, New Zealand’s Maori’s are also achieving similar results.

From:
Agence France Presse

Museum returns Maori bones to N.Zealand
(AFP) – Nov 16, 2009

LONDON — A British museum handed back a set of Maori skeletal remains to indigenous leaders from New Zealand on Monday, 80 years after they were discovered in storage there, officials said.

The remains are thought to have been traded but then forgotten, and to be from Ahuahu or Great Mercury Island, off the coast of New Zealand’s North Island.
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Australian Aboriginal representatives are in the UK to lobby the Wellcome Trust, Oxford & Cambridge Universities for the return of Aboriginal remains held in their collection – something that they are likely to be successful with, based on their track record in recent years since the introduction of the Human Tissue Act 2004.

They are also discussing another entirely separate case – that of a sculpted bus of the last true Aboriginal from Tasmania, claiming that it is racist art. I’m in two minds about this case – whilst I respect their views & the original motivation for creation of the bust may in part have been motivated by a racially prejudiced world view, there is no evidenced that this is what the sculpture is now being used to portray. This is not something that physically ever belonged to the Aborigines, but instead they are laying claim to a likeness or representation, something that could set a very uncomfortable precedent if they were successful. One possible compromise would of course be to remove the artefact from display, but still to retain ownership of it. Another might be for more informative signage to indicate to visitors the issues surrounding the piece. Because the bust is currently in the British Museum, the British Museum Act’s anti-deaccessioning clauses would rule out the possibility of any form of outright return – at present if those asking for the artefact have plans for circumventing this.

From:
Artinfo

Aboriginal Remains, And a Bust, Sought From U.K.
Published: September 17, 2009

HOBART, Australia—She’s the most famous historical figure from the Tasmanian Aboriginal community in Australia, and 130 years after her death, representations of Truganini in the form of busts have provoked a continuing controversy.

Last month the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre in Hobart stopped a Sotheby’s auction in Melbourne from selling busts of Truganini and her husband, Woureddy. Now, representatives of the Tasmanian Aboriginal community have flown to Britain in hopes of reclaiming another copy of Truganini’s bust, along with remains of other ancestors held by medical and academic institutions in the U.K.
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The reunification of human remains held in museums with Aboriginal groups is a hot topic at the moment in Australia. The Human Tissue Act made the return of many such artefacts possible, but there are still many who claim that such returns are removing a key source of scientific & anthropological study – to the detriment of the institutions that currently held the artefacts.

Listen to the original programme here.

From:
ABC (Australia)

Regarding human remains
12 August 2009
The collection and display of human remains and human body parts were once legitimate activities for the great universal museums. Rear Vision tracks the changes in attitudes towards such displays from outside the museum world as well as from within.

CLACKING/CHANTING

Man: We’re gathered here today to welcome our old people back home.

Reporter: The Naranjeri remains were stolen from 27 gravesites between 1898 and 1906 by the controversial Adelaide coroner, Dr William Ramsay Smith. He sold livers, hearts and skeletons on the open market, all in the name of research.

Keri Phillips: During the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, collectors, traders and amateur and professional scientists from the developed world amassed enormous collections from all over the globe. These collections often contained human remains, everything from tattooed human skin and skulls to the bones of lepers and other diseased body parts. Early on, but especially during the 20th century, many of these collections were bequeathed to museums but as time wore on and museums began to change from research institutions to places of public display, questions began to be raised both within and outside the museum community about the ethics and legality of the collection, retention and display of humans and human body parts. In recent decades, some museums have begun to repatriate their collection of human remains.
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There have been many cases in recent years where museums in the UK have returned Aboriginal artefacts that consist of (or incorporate) human remains. New negotiations involving bark etchings however are interesting, as there is no clear indication from the article that there is any connection with human remains. Technically this would mean that the British Museum was legally forbidden from returning them, although there is the possibility of some form of loan, as was used with the Kwakwaka’wakw mask returned to Canadian first Nations people.

From:
Melbourne Sun Herald

British Museum may hand back Aboriginal artifacts
AAP
July 22, 2009 12:21pm

THE British Museum has begun talks with Victorian Aboriginals about the possible return of rare bark etchings believed to be more than 150 years old.
The three etchings, estimated to be worth more than $1 million, have been held in London for many years after their collection by Victorian landowner John Hunter Kerr near Lake Boort in the 1850s.

When they were lent to Museum Victoria along with a ceremonial headdress for a temporary display in 2004, members of the Dja Dja Wurrung tribe dramatically seized hold of them and demanded they be returned to the Boort area.
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More coverage of the most recent agreement by a British institution to return Aboriginal remains from its collection.

From:
BBC News

Page last updated at 13:56 GMT, Wednesday, 13 May 2009 14:56 UK
Museum returns Aboriginal remains

Members of an Aboriginal tribe held a ritual in front of Liverpool’s World Museum to mark the repatriation of human remains to Australia.

A skull is being returned to representatives of the Ngarrindjeri people because it has strong spiritual and religious significance.
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Since the introduction of the Human Tissue Act, Aboriginal Australians have had a huge number of successes in retrieving artefacts from British Institutions. If other restitution cases are to be successful there are many lessons that can be learned from observing the various steps that led to this current situation with regards to Aboriginal artefacts.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Museum returns old Aboriginal skull to Australia
The skull of an indigenous Aboriginal Australian taken from the country 100 years ago and kept by a British museum has been handed back.
Last Updated: 7:55PM BST 13 May 2009

Little is known about the remains, thought to date back to the 19th century, which were returned to members of the Ngarrindjeri during a ceremony in Liverpool on Wednesday.

The remains were bought from Dr William Broad, of Liverpool, in 1948 after he visited Australia between 1902 and 1904 and published works on skeletal remains in the country.
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