Thammasat University students interested in law, art, business, economics, sociology, and related subjects may find it useful to participate in a free 9 September Zoom webinar on Art Arbitration and Alternatives.
The event, on Monday, 9 September 2024 at noon Bangkok time, is organized by the Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong (HKU).
The event announcement explains:
LL.M. Programme in Arbitration & Dispute Resolution
Art Arbitration and Alternatives
Speaker: Ms Hin Han Shum, Solicitor Advocate, Senior Associate, Squire Patton Boggs
- Date: 9 September 2024
- Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
- Via Zoom
About the Speaker:
Ms Hin Han Shum is a solicitor advocate, able to be heard in the High Court and Court of Final Appeal. She has conducted various litigation cases and has represented clients in different levels of Hong Kong courts. As an accredited general mediator, Ms Shum is familiar with the common fundamental issues leading to disputes and aims to prevent those risks at the contract preparation stage. She was a member of the Steering Committee on Mediation under the Department of Justice and is also admitted as an associate member of the Hong Kong Institute of Arbitrators.
She is heavily involved in the commercial practice and has experience in contract drafting and advisory work for food and beverage brands entering and exiting the Hong Kong market.
Ms Shum also often advises clients on privacy laws, drafts privacy policies and website terms, and provides practical solutions to clients in relation to cybersecurity incidents.
She has been seconded to international companies to assist their in-house legal teams with day-to-day operations and major legal transactions. These experiences have allowed her to develop a pragmatic approach to solve business operation issues.
Ms Shum sits on the Council of the Law Society of Hong Kong (the regulatory body of all Hong Kong solicitors) and serves as a member of various committees, including the Standing Committee on Compliance and External Affairs, Anti-Money Laundering Committee, Innotech Committee, Arbitration Committee and Mediation Committee. She is currently an officer of the International Bar Association (IBA) Young Lawyers Committee and Anti-Corruption Committee.
She is often invited to speak at international conferences and universities on topics such as merger and acquisitions, artificial intelligence in businesses, blockchain, data privacy, and international commercial arbitration, and has contributed to the “Annotated Ordinances of Hong Kong: Business Registration Ordinance” (Cap. 310) (3rd edition, published by LexisNexis), the Partnership Law Handbook (3rd edition, published by LexisNexis) and other World Bank researches.
She is a Chairman of the Appeal Tribunal Panel (Buildings) and sits on Criminal and Law Enforcement Injuries Compensation Boards.
She was the finalist of the Asia Legal Business Hong Kong Law Award 2023 for the Taylor Root Award Young Lawyer of the Year.
The TU Library collection includes several books about different aspects of art arbitration.
Students are invited to register at this link for the event:
https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_regform.aspx?guest=Y&UEID=95892
With any questions or for further information, please write to
llmadr@hku.hk
A blog posted last year on LexisNexis explains:
Art market disputes very rarely receive publicity in the world of international commercial arbitration even though there can be very few industry sectors in which disputes lend themselves more squarely to resolution by arbitration.
There are a number of reasons why arbitration and art are perfect companions. First, the international art market is big business. According to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2023, worldwide art and antiques sales increased 3% year-on-year to an estimated US$67.8bn (£54.8bn) in 2022, with the US art market leading the way with 45% of sales by value, followed by the UK with 18% and China with 17%. Second, the art market is truly global in nature: the Art Market Report suggests that UK art and antiques dealers, for example, made just 40% of their sales to UK buyers, with 60% of sales going to overseas buyers. Third, confidentiality is highly prized in art transactions between private buyers and sellers, and even art sales and purchases at public auction are often conducted via intermediaries to preserve the anonymity of the ultimate buyer and seller. Artworks that become the subject of court proceedings and public controversy will often be considered ‘burnt’ by the art market, i.e., they become either unsellable altogether, or are at least devalued as a result of the adverse publicity. Fourth, art disputes can be highly technical and complex, concerning questions such as title, provenance, authenticity, historical restitution claims, and issues of copyright; in addition to more conventional contract disputes, and their subject matter can span pretty much anything created in thousands of years of art history, from pre-historic artefacts to NFTs. And, finally, art law is a complex web of international conventions, national laws, soft law and trade customs.
These factors mean that the traditional advantages of arbitration, such as the confidentiality of the proceedings, flexibility of the process, the ability to choose a seat in any convenient jurisdiction, the ability to select arbitrators based on their experience with art law and the art market, and the wide enforceability of arbitral awards under the New York Convention, are all intrinsically relevant and valuable in such disputes.
Surprisingly, given this landscape, there are relatively few arbitral bodies which specialise in the resolution of art disputes, such as Art Art Resolve, the Court of Court of Arbitration for Art, and the Camera Arbitrale di Venezia, with the latter two institutions having published their own dedicated arbitration rules and model clauses. There is of course no reason in principle why other arbitration institutions should not also be able to resolve art disputes, as indeed, can ad hoc arbitration proceedings.
There are, however, also obstacles to resolving art disputes through arbitration. Some of these are common to the arbitration process generally, such as time and cost. But some are more specific to the nature of art market participants: for example, even the most prolific private art collector will generally be categorised as a consumer under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (CRA 2015). […]
It remains to be seen whether arbitration will eventually become more widely accepted to resolve international art market disputes involving consumers. However, outside of the confines of consumer disputes, claimants and respondents will already be well advised to consider submitting their art market disputes to resolution by arbitration.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)