Mr. President, I am very pleased to join with my colleague and good friend Senator Hatch to introduce this bill, which will resolve an unsettled issue that is making it difficult for museums and…
Mr. President, I am very pleased to join with my colleague and good friend Senator Hatch to introduce this bill, which will resolve an unsettled issue that is making it difficult for museums and universities to obtain works of art for temporary exhibition from foreign countries.
Cultural exchange with foreign nations enables the sharing of ideas and history across the globe. When foreign works are shown at American museums, they expose our people to the richness of world history and culture.
In 2011, the San Diego Museum of Art hosted an exhibition of 64 works of famous Spanish artists, such as El Greco, Pablo Picasso, Francisco Goya, and Salvador Dali.
Also in 2011, the De Young Museum in San Francisco hosted an exhibition of more than 100 Picasso masterpieces from Paris, as well as more than 100 objects from the Olmec civilization in Mexico.
In 2009, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted an exhibit containing artifacts from the Ancient Roman city of Pompeii, which was buried by a volcanic eruption and rediscovered in the 18th Century.
In 2007, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted an exhibit with approximately 250 works of art created in more than seven different Latin American countries between 1492 and 1820.
Without these exhibitions coming to American museums, many Americans simply would not have the chance to see such important cultural and historical works in person. Exhibitions of such works also draw countless visitors each year, helping museums--which are vital to the preservation of our own culture and heritage--survive and thrive in difficult economic times.
For decades, American law has offered legal protection for these exhibitions. Passed in 1965, a law called the Immunity from Seizure Act, 22 U.S.C. 2459, is designed to provide the legal certainty necessary for American museums to organize such exhibitions with their foreign counterparts.
This law empowers the President or his designee to approve a foreign work for temporary exhibition or display in the United States, a process now handled by the State Department. If approval is granted, then the work of art is essentially protected from judicial process-- such as a court-ordered seizure--while it is in the United States.
Unfortunately, this important law has been undermined by a decision of the U.S District Court for the District of Columbia in a case called Malewicz v. City of Amsterdam.
In this case, the City of Amsterdam had made a temporary loan of works of art for educational and cultural purposes to the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Menil Collection in Houston Texas.
Even though the State Department's approval was sought and received for the temporary loan, the court held that the City of Amsterdam's temporary loan nevertheless subjected the City to Federal court jurisdiction in a lawsuit over the work of art.
The reason was that--even though the loan was for educational and cultural purposes, for works to be shown at museums--the City's activities nevertheless qualified as ``commercial activity'' under a provision of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(3).
The result of this decision, unsurprisingly, is that foreign museums have been more reluctant to lend their art works to our museums in the United States.
The Executive Branch during the Bush administration recognized this problem and tried to correct it. It urged the D.C. Circuit to reverse the decision, saying in an amicus brief that the District Court's ruling was wrong, that it ``substantially undermine[d] the purposes'' of the Immunity from Seizure Act, and that it would ``discourage foreign states and other lenders from providing their artwork for temporary exhibit in the United States.'' Unfortunately the appeal was dismissed before the D.C. Circuit had a chance to correct this problem. That is why this bill is necessary.
Several museums in my home state--including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art--have asked me to help restore the legal certainty that existed prior to the Malewicz decision. I know that institutions in Senator Hatch's home State of Utah have sought his help in this regard as well.
I am very pleased to say that Senator Hatch and I have worked together--along with House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Ranking Member John Conyers, and Representatives Steve Chabot and Steve Cohen--to draft a narrow bill that we hope can be enacted quickly this year.
This bill is simple. It relies on the State Department's approval process. If the State Department approves a loan of a foreign art work--essentially immunizing the work from judicial seizure under existing law--then the foreign state's activities associated with the work's exhibition cannot be used to assert jurisdiction over the foreign state under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(3).
This narrow approach does only what is necessary to fix the problem created by the Malewicz decision--nothing more, nothing less.
It is important to note that this bill would not apply if the foreign state does not seek or receive the State Department's approval. The State Department requires detailed certifications and independent investigations about an art work's provenance before it grants approval. The bill also expressly would not apply to any work taken in Europe by the Nazis or their collaborators.
Once again, I thank Senator Hatch and my colleagues in the House for working with me on this important legislation, which has already passed the House of Representatives by voice vote. I urge my colleagues to join us in supporting this legislation.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
