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4 - The Transformative Role of Digital Databases

from Part I - Drivers of Change in the World of Cultural Property

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2025

Amnon Lehavi
Affiliation:
Reichman University
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Summary

Chapter 4 offers a first-of-its-kind taxonomy of different types of cultural property databases that are being developed and expanded at an increasing rate by a multitude of private and public entities. It explains how such digital databases may facilitate a legal, public-policy, and professional shift in designing law, policy, and markets for cultural property. The chapter begins with a study of the recently launched Digital Benin project and then offers an overview of (1) international and national databases for crime detection, such as INTERPOL’s Stolen Works of Art Database; (2) private databases offering due diligence services, such as the Art Loss Register; (3) theme-specific databases on Nazi-looted assets and colonial contexts; and (4) academic and professional databases for provenance research, such as the Louvre’s open-access digital database, which was launched in 2021 and features more than 500,000 objects from the museum’s collections, or the Getty Provenance Index, which provides access to about 2.5 million items. The chapter seeks to demonstrate that digital databases on cultural property can (1) facilitate fact-finding in specific disputes; (2) serve as a professional or even legal benchmark for abiding by due diligence and similar norms; (3) enable information-sharing as a basis for “just and fair solutions” in the context of Nazi-looted artifacts, “colonial contexts,” and other circumstances that address past wrongs; and (4) promote a general value of transparency in a field previously dominated by opacity and secrecy.

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Type
Chapter
Information
Cultural Property
Law, Policy, and Markets
, pp. 156 - 190
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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