As you may have rightly guessed, art and cultural heritage laws are laws that primarily govern the cultural heritage industries that include the historic preservation, art, museums, archeology along with cultural landscapes.

1) It is that area of law which governs the rights to sustain and procure your culture and art. It is a niche area of law which requires expertise on multiple streams of law that include land use law, insurance law, corporate laws, federal or central as well as applicable and relevant individual state laws, contract laws, in case if there is, and then nonprofit law amongst many others.

2) It is owing to the requirement of sound knowledge in these diverse law subjects which makes attorneys or legal professionals specializing in this niche area of law in great demand.

3) To understand what is included within the scope of art and cultural, legal services, it is crucial to understand what all industries are covered within the scope of this area of law: Preservation of Historic Buildings, Art, Museums, Cultural Landscapes and Cultural resource management which includes archeology.

There is no ‘standard’ definition of the said terminology since it is still unclear as to the kind of industries which will be governed by this law. The Lawyer’s Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP) has tried defining cultural heritage as, “While there is defined namespace for cultural heritage, it basically refers to the places, objects, and traditional values that may define any of societies, individuals, civilizations, nations and even includes the human beings”.

Further, the LCCHP has also clarified that all creations, structures that are more and accurately culturally important, tangible in nature and which are mostly man-made will fall within the scope of art and cultural heritage laws. So, to put it briefly, things or structures like artifacts, art, monuments, archaeological sites, antiquities historic buildings, and sacred places, etc. will fall under this area of law.

In spite of being a niche branch of law, art, and cultural heritage legal services as a profession still have not received due recognition as a separate branch of law. Many legal experts are of the opinion that the subject matter of this area of law is so diverse and vague that it is still not clear as to what should be included as part of these laws.

In spite of facing such severe criticisms, there are quite a few law firms that are still actively working in this unheard area of law. Even if the law is quite unknown to many of the citizens, it provides the quite strong stand for your concerned activities.

The honest opinion of art, and cultural heritage legal services of such legal professionals is that only when handful such attorneys or legal professionals will come and work in unity even if all of them belong to diverse jurisdictions, only then will they be able to stress the need for such an area of law.