Art Law Blog : New York Art Law Lawyer & Attorney : Fox Rothschild Law Firm : Theft, Intellectual Property, Institutional Negotiation : Manhattan, New York City

This blog reported that a trial appeared likely in the case of a dispute over ownership to the Nazi-looted paining by Egon Schiele entitled "Portrait of Wally." 

However the case has been settled.  An interesting commentary on whether the case should have settled much earlier can be found here. 

Per the settlement, the Leopold Museum has agreed to pay $19 million to the heirs of the rightful owner.  In addition, the work will be shown for three weeks at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City, which commemorates victims of the Holocaust.

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The New York Times has reported that the heirs of the Hungarian banker Baron Mor Lipot Herzog have filed a lawsuit in United States District Court in Washington demanding the return of the art collection they say is theirs and which was allegedly stored in Hungary during the Holocaust but never returned.

According to the Times, in addition to the more than 40 artworks explicitly identified in the filing — including paintings, sculptures and other works by masters like El Greco, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Zurbarán, van Dyck, and Velázquez  — the plaintiffs' lawyers are also asking the Hungarian government for an accounting of all art from the Herzog family in its possession.

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Judge Richard Sullivan has upheld new regulations seeking to cap the number of art vendors allowed in Manhattan's busiest parks the Associated Press reports.

Motions were brought in two cases seeking to prohibit the city's parks department from enforcing the new rules.

The city administration has said the parks have become too crowded, but the lawsuit argued that farmers market and holiday commercial vendors create more congestion in the parks than the artists.

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Bonhams has auctioned off the most expensive print ever sold in the U.K. and simultaneously set a record for the second most expensive print ever sold anywhere, the Telegraph has reported.

Edward Munch's "Madonna" was sold for 1.25 million pounds despite being estimated to go for 5 to 7 hundred thousand pounds.

According to the Telegraph, Bonhams head of prints, Robert Kennan, said: ''It has been a real privilege selling such a wonderful image and it fully deserves to have achieved such a fantastic price.''

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Here is a hard lesson for owners of valuable art concerning their insurance policy: if it turns out that Old Master is a forgery, your insurance policy may not cover the "loss" you allegedly sustained by reason of the forgery.

As reported in the July 7, 2010 issue of the New York Law Journal, summary judgment was granted by Justice Giacomo of the New York Supreme Court in favor of a defendant insurer who argued that a claim by a policyholder that they suffered a "physical loss" by virtue of the discovery that their Renoir was a forgery was without merit.

Among other things, the Court held that there was no evidence that such a "loss" was covered under the terms of the policy.

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This was a less than perfect couple of weeks for the major auction houses in London.

At Sotheby's in London, the New York Times reported,, an auction which kicked off two weeks of summer sales totaled $165.2 million but had been estimated to fetch $148.4 million to $217.5 million. Also sixteen of the 51 works did not sell.

At Christie's the night after, the Times reported, more ambitious than Sotheby’s session the day before, the auction fetched $228 million but 16 works did not sell.

The Times also reported that "[m]ore significant, Christie’s failed to squeeze extravagant prices out of its star lots, as some had hoped would be the case. "

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