In 2014 a medical CT scan revealed a mummified monk inside an ancient Buddha statue. The body is thought to be that of Buddhist master Liuquan, a member of the Chinese Meditation School who died around A.D. 1100, stolen twenty year earlier from the Buddhist Pu Zhao temple in China’s Fujian province, and afterwards sold in Hong Kong to a Dutch collector.

The villagers of Yanchun and Dong Pu are now claiming the return of the statue thru legal proceedings both in the Netherlands and in China – for the first time in history that a Chinese court seized jurisdiction over a case filed by Chinese plaintiffs to repatriate a stolen cultural property illicitly exported.

This seminar will go into the details of the mummified Buddha statue case and the legal issues involved. We will furthermore take a look at the general rules for the return of cultural heritage, and discuss the current climate in which claims are made.

About the Speaker:

Laurens Kasteleijn is the founder of Art Law Services: a Hong Kong and Amsterdam based consultancy firm offering legal services to individuals and organizations active in the international art world.

As a former art gallery director and corporate M&A lawyer, Laurens founded Art Law Services in 2013 – integrating his love of art, his legal training and his knowledge of international business. Laurens holds a Masters degree in corporate law from the University of Amsterdam and has also studied in France and at the Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Laurens has lectured on ‘Legal Issues in the Art World’ at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in Hong Kong and in London, and writes frequently on this subject. He is the co-author of the Dutch chapter of the IBA Art, Cultural Institutions and Heritage Law Committee report.

He is a board member of the Art and Law Association in the Netherlands, and a contributor to the Responsible Art Market initiative in Switzerland.

The Law Society of Hong Kong has awarded this seminar 1 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) point.