Paper short abstract:

There is much debate in different quarters of governments, museums, art-dealers and academia on rethinking the laws that govern the circulation of art. This paper outlines the larger social and aesthetic implications of the present laws.

Paper long abstract:

The discourse on 'art and aesthetics in a globalising world' rests on the premise of movement, or rather, circulation of people, art and ideas. Paradoxically, even in the twenty-first century, the laws that govern such movement are informed by colonialism and early twentieth century nationalism. Heritage is, by law, which is defined by the antiquities found in / on a nation's land, even as the people that live on that land may be refugees, diasporas. The laws create a divide where they seek to preserve and protect what is deemed as 'national' heritage while contemporary and modern art is not governed by these laws. The subject matter of globalisation thus gets increasingly implicated in the contemporary (as that is source material that circulates) widening a gulf with pre-modern history which, the [de-terrorialised] global refugee is to seek 'elsewhere', in some other nation. It widens also the gulf with history and tradition which seem to factor uncomfortably in the discourse on the modern and contemporary. Is it time then to revisit these laws in a globalised world?