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Now Virtual: Protecting Cultural Heritage during Armed Conflict
Feb 22 @ 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
A ROMAN VISHNIAC CITIES AND WARS PROGRAM
Join the Magnes for a lecture via Zoom with Patty Gerstenblith, President of the Board of Directors of the US Committee of the Blue Shield and Chair of the Blue Shield International Working Group on Countering Trafficking of Cultural Objects, Distinguished Research Professor of Law at DePaul University, and Director of DePaul’s Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law.
Thursday, February 22, 2024 | 5:30pm
This lecture is now virtual via Zoom.
Cultural heritage has always been at severe risk during armed conflict. Wars from the time of antiquity to the Second World War and the recent and current conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine have destroyed both movable and immovable cultural heritage and put archaeological sites and collections of cultural objects at risk for theft and looting. This lecture will explore the legal, ethical, and voluntary constraints that have been adopted to protect cultural heritage and in particular archaeological sites from this type of damage and destruction.
Please register to receive a Zoom link.
If you have any questions about accessibility or require accommodations to participate in this event, please contact us at magnes@berkeley.edu or call us at (510) 643-2526 with as much advance notice as possible.
Special thanks to Taube Philanthropies, the Libitzky Family Foundation, Richard Nagler, and an anonymous donor for supporting the care and processing of the Roman Vishniac Archive.
About Professor Patty Gerstenblith
Patty Gerstenblith is Distinguished Research Professor of Law at DePaul University and Director of its Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law. In 2011, President Obama appointed her to serve as Chair of the President’s Cultural Property Advisory Committee in the Department of State on which she had previously served as a Public Representative in the Clinton administration. Since 2020, she has served as President of the Board of Directors of the US Committee of the Blue Shield and Chair of the Blue Shield International Working Group on Countering Trafficking of Cultural Objects. She lectures and publishes widely in the United States and internationally on the protection of cultural property during armed conflict, preservation of archaeological heritage, and the trade in archaeological and other cultural objects. Her book, Cultural Objects and Reparative Justice: A Legal and Historical Analysis, was published by Oxford University Press in the fall of 2023. The fourth edition of her casebook, Art, Cultural Heritage and the Law, was published in 2019. She is founding president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (2005-2011), a Research Associate at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, an Expert for the Fulbright Specialist Project at the Department of Antiquities of Jordan in 2019, the Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College in 2021, a member of the American Bar Association’s International Art and Cultural Heritage Law steering committee, and the Archaeological Institute of America’s Charles Eliot Norton National Lecturer for the 2023/24 academic year. Gerstenblith received her AB from Bryn Mawr College, PhD in art history and anthropology from Harvard University, JD from Northwestern University and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Before joining the DePaul law faculty, Gerstenblith clerked for the Honorable Richard D. Cudahy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
