According to this article, discussion related to the Barnes Foundation art collection reopened on Monday. A petition was filed in Montgomery County Orphan’s Court on February 17, 2011 to stop the transfer of the art from its current Lower Merion location to
The petition was filed on behalf of several groups who are apparently dedicated to keeping the collection in
In December 2004, Judge
(Nicole Dornbusch assisted with this blog posting.)
A former art director working for dealer Lawrence Salander was convicted of defrauding four estates out of about $5 million by selling 80 works of art without notifying their owner.
Leigh Morse evaded a full prison sentence, however, according to this article, and will “serve weekends in prison for four months and pay restitution of $1.65 million.”
Salander himself was exposed for operating a $120 million art Ponzi scheme at his Upper East Side gallery. He began serving his six- to 18-year sentence last year.
(Nicole Dornbusch contributed to this article.)
According to this article, a Philadelphia art and antiquities dealer, Victor Gordon, was arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn for smuggling up to a ton of carved ivory brought in to the United States through John F. Kennedy Airport between 2006 and 2009. This is one of the largest American seizures of elephant ivory on record.
The prosecution alleges that Gordon's agent would purchase the raw ivory, then stain or dye it to make it appear antique. He would thus avoid subjection to the endangered species law mandated under the 1975 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, because ivory imported before a certain date is not unlawful according to these regulations. Gordon pleaded not-guilty; however, if he is convicted, he could face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for violating the Endangered Species Act.
(Nicole Dornbusch contributed to this article.)
Judge Berman in the United States District Court, S.D.N.Y., recently held that there was no federal question jurisdiction in a matter where Sotheby's sued Modern Art Services Ltd. for negligent mishandling of a statue. The Court also determined that Sotheby's claim was not preempted by the Carmack Amendment.
The Court noted that absent evidence Congress intended federal courts to have exclusive subject matter jurisdiction over the preemption defense to state law claims against air carriers, it must assume that "a state court, subject to review by a writ of certiorari can resolve such a defense as ably as could a federal district court."
The decision is reported as Sotheby's Inc. v. Modern Art Services, Ltd., 10 CIV 9032, April 21, 2011.
According to this article, the famous actor testified in a case against gallery director Leigh Morse, who is accused of involvement in swiping two of De Niro's father's paintings to pay off creditors.
De Niro said he'd wanted their financial dealings to be "kosher."
However, when De Niro tried to continue his testimony, he was cut off by a sustained objection.
According to the article, De Niro so reveres his father that he still keeps the Figurative Expressionist painter's SoHo studio intact, just as it was on the day he died in 1993: paintbrushes in jars, tubes of dried oil paint - even the last newspapers he read.
Sometimes the distinctions and nuances omnipresent in conceptual art simply don't pass judicial muster.
Judge Batts of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York was recently on the bench in a lawsuit where the famous artist Richard Prince was alleged to have wrongfully misappropriated the work of another artist., Patrick Cariou, by drawing over the photographs taken by Mr. Cariou.
As this article in the Wall Street Journal states:
"So, delightfully, Mr. Prince was put under oath and asked just what important idea he was expressing in doodling over Mr. Cariou's photographs. Even a little idea—something, anything—would have done, the judge suggests in her ruling.
And yet, asked what he had in mind when he superimposed sunglasses and a guitar on one of Mr. Cariou's Rastafarians, this was the best Mr. Prince could come up with: "[H]e's playing the guitar now, it looks like he's playing the guitar, it looks as if he's always played the guitar, that's what my message was."
The result? According to the article, Mr. Prince has been ordered to hand over to Mr. Cariou the paintings that remain, and to tell the owners of the works already sold that they cannot be legally displayed (which means those collectors are going to be demanding their money back).
According to the Washington Post, opponents of a plan to move The Barnes Foundation's legendary art collection to Philadelphia are asking a judge to reopen the case.
The Friends of the Barnes Foundation want to halt the Barnes' move from suburban Lower Merion.
In court documents filed Thursday, they accuse former Attorney General Mike Fisher of misconduct. They say he should have been a neutral party but instead was a "major player" in enabling the Barnes' move by pressuring its trustees.
According to this article,the Hungarian government says it has asked a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit by the heirs of a prominent Jewish collector who are seeking the return of art worth over $100 million seized during the Holocaust.
The Ministry of National Development said Tuesday that the 2010 suit by the heirs of Baron Mor Lipot Herzog in Washington should be dismissed, in part because compensation for the 44 artworks was covered by a 1973 claims agreement between Hungary and the United States.
The collection, which consists of works that included paintings by El Greco and Francisco de Zurbaran, were apparently seized by the Nazis and Hungary's Communist regime.
A Nashville chancery court has granted Fisk University permission to sell a half-share in its famed Stieglitz art collection for $30 million. The Court also ruled that $20 million of the sale be set aside in a trust to preserve the art if Fisk's money troubles force the school to close.
Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper was not pleased with the ruling, having argued that it violates O'Keeffe's explicit wish that the collection never be sold. He also warned that allowing the sale might deter other donors from giving to Tennessee museums and universities in the future.
According to this article, despite the ruling, a small group of Fisk University alumni have signed a letter requesting the resignation of president Hazel O'Leary in part because of her role in the school's efforts to sell the art collection.
One of the more interesting ongoing sagas related to the art world is that of Huguette Clark.
Clark is the 104-year-old mining heiress who has lived in a New York hospital for the past 20 years. She has a $500 million fortune according to the Wall Street Journal. Almost all of her finances are being managed by her lawyer and accountant, who are under attack by the Manhattan District Attorney's Elder Abuse Unit. The DA alleges that lawyer Wallace Bock and accountant Irving Kamsler are improperly managing her $500 million fortune.
On Thursday, Judge Laura Visitacion-Lewis of the New York County Court said the bid by Clark's relatives to have her declared incapacitated purportedly had procedural deficiencies in its court filing specifically because of "its hearsay, conclusory and speculative assertions of incapacity."
Some of those assertions by Clark's three relatives had been based on stories that appeared in The Post and MSNBC.com detailing Bock and Kamsler's handling of the heiress and her wealth.
In July this blog reported that a recent ban on the number of art vendors in New York City Parks had been upheld by Judge Richard Sullivan.
As the New York Times has reported last Thursday, Justice Martin Schoenfeld of State Supreme Court in Manhattan granted a temporary restraining order that prevented the parks department and the city from enforcing the rules until today, when artists and the city are due in court for a hearing.
According to the Times, the new rules, which went into effect on July 19, set off a firestorm among the city’s vendors, who say the measures are unnecessary and create a chilling effect on self-expression in the 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.
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.
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.
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.
The fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008 is considered by many to have triggered one of the worst economic declines since the Great Depression.
You can now own a piece of this regrettable history as Sotheby's looks to auction off over 400 works that once dotted the hallways of the famous investment house.
The auction, which is scheduled to occur on September 25, 2010, is expected to fetch more than $10 million, reported the Wall Street Journal. On Tuesday, June 15, 2010, Judge Peck of the United States Bankruptcy Court is anticipated to hear the application to put the works up at auction.
The WSJ article reports that:
"Included among the artwork is a piece from Mr. Hirst's "We've Got Style" series of cabinet sculptures and Mr. Warhol's "Young Woman With Halo of Birds," as well works by Maya Lin, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg."
The adult children of artist Frank Frazetta have resolved a dispute over control of their elderly father's body of work, the Associated Press has reported.
The dispute apparently involved Frazetta's son, Frank Frazetta Jr., using a backhoe to break into the artist's museum in the Poconos. Police say he tried to remove 90 paintings insured for $20 million. The AP reports that Frazetta Jr. insisted he was attempting to safeguard the art from his scheming siblings.
More can be found here:
http://www.longislandpress.com/2010/04/23/frazetta-siblings-resolve-dispute-over-fantasy-art/
On Monday, Lucia Eames, the daughter of the famous designer Charles Eames, perhaps best known for his classic design of plywood and fiberglass chairs, filed a lawsuit in an Illinois circuit court alleging that the family owns material which was planned to be put up on the auction block at the Wright Auction House in Chicago.
More about the lawsuit can be found here:
artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/lawsuit-filed-over-eames-archives/
Lawrence Salander pleaded guilty last Thursday to a $120 million fraud scheme, admitting he sold paintings he did not own and at least once sold fractional shares of a painting that added up to more than 100 percent.
More about the guilty plea can be found here:
www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/nyregion/19salander.html
An 18th Century painting by Scottish Romantic painter Sir Henry Raeburn is embroiled in litigation. The work allegedly belongs to Joanne King Herring, the character played by Julia Robert's in the movie Charlie Wilson's War, who reported it missing with the ALR, but last year a New York man attempted to sell the painting at Sotheby's. Although the auction house apparently intended to release the painting to King, it did not do so because the man would not cede ownership even though he could not produce any evidence of ownership. Herring is now suing to recover the work.
More about the dispute is covered here:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6877348.html
As reported in a recent article published in the October 27, 2009 edition of the New York Law Journal, Judge Bransten of the New York Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by a purchaser of a painting by contemporary artist Julian Schnabel entitled "Chinkzee." The plaintiff claimed that, among other things, she was defrauded to the tune of $290,000, or the amount the plaintiff allegedly paid for the work.
Judge Bransten apparently found that the plaintiff failed to exercise a requisite degree of "ordinary intelligence" in determining the value of the work prior to forking over the $290,000, leaving the plaintiff with unavailing claims of fraud.
The decision raises important questions for those who believe that they have been defrauded in the purchase or sale of art, to wit: under what circumstances can a purchaser recover if they believe they have been deceived? As always, it depends on the facts of the case but Judge Bransten's decision indicates that, at a minimum, a purchaser of art should always attempt to obtain an independent appraisal of the value of the works to be purchased before forking over the funds. This may particularly true where the purchaser is engaged in some capacity in the art world, making it more difficult for the future litigant to claim he or she could not have reasonably discovered the true value of the works.
More information about the decision can be found here: www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp
One of the principal issues facing the art community is the controversial process of “deaccessioning.” Deaccessioning is the process by which art or other valuable artifacts are removed or sold by a museum or institution. One of the highest-profile legal matters involving deaccessioning has been instituted by the overseers of Brandeis University Rose Art Museum against Brandeis University.
Brandeis is facing the lawsuit as well as an investigation by the Massachusetts attorney general over Brandeis' Board of Trustees' announcement that it would close the university's Rose Art Museum and sell off its collection. The collection has been valued at approximately $350 to $400 million dollars. The collection includes works by, among others, Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Brandeis claims it needs the funds for the school’s research projects.
The lawsuit, filed on July 27, 2009 , took a step forward last week when Judge Jeremy A. Stahlin ruled that the plaintiffs had legal standing to proceed with their case and begin the discovery process. Plaintiffs seek to maintain the Rose collection by stating that the University's decision to close it and sell its paintings would violate museum ethical codes. The lawsuit also states that the University's decision violates its commitment to the Rose family to maintain the museum solely as a public museum.
Trial dates have been set for the Summer of 2010.
One way that the New York legislature has attempted to protect unwary artists is through the enactment of the New York's Arts and Cultural Affairs Law Section 12.01. (See Footnote 1)
This statute is particularly relevant in today's uncertain economy because it prohibits an art merchant from taking a security interest in an artwork that is loaned to the merchant by the artist, thereby prohibiting the artworks from being subject to the claims of the merchant's creditors, in the event that the merchant goes out of business and/or files for bankruptcy protection.
The statute provides, in part:
1. Notwithstanding any custom, practice or usage of the trade, any provision of the uniform commercial code or any other law, statute, requirement or rule, or any agreement, note, memorandum or writing to the contrary:
(a) Whenever an artist or craftsperson, his heirs or personal representatives, delivers or causes to be delivered a work of fine art, craft or a print of his own creation to an art merchant for the purpose of exhibition and/or sale on a commission, fee or other basis of compensation, the delivery to and acceptance thereof by the art merchant establishes a consignor/consignee relationship as between such artist or craftsperson and such art merchant with respect to the said work, and:
(i) such consignee shall thereafter be deemed to be the agent of such consignor with respect to the said work;
(ii) such work is trust property in the hands of the consignee for the benefit of the consignor;
(iii) any proceeds from the sale of such work are trust funds in the hands of the consignee for the benefit of the consignor.
In Zucker v. Hirschl & Adler Galleries,Inc., 170 Misc.2d 426, 648 N.Y.S.2d 521 (Sup. Ct., N.Y. Co. 1996), the Court granted partial summary judgment for the plaintiff-artist Joseph Zucker on the basis that the statute expressly precluded the claim by the defendant art gallery that Zucker's works were subject to the gallery's security interest.
In plain terms then, in the event of the merchant's bankruptcy, under New York's law, an artist's work should not be subject to the claims of the merchant, the merchant's estate, or its creditors. Not all states, however, may protect artists the way New York does. If you are an artist, you should find out what state's law applies to you before consigning your work, and whether or not your works will be protected.
[1] An “Artist” is defined in Arts & Cultural Affairs Law § 11.01 as a “creator of work of fine art.” The definition of “Art Merchant” is also found in Arts & Cultural Affairs Law § 11.01(2), and is defined as a “person who is in the business of dealing, exclusively or non-exclusively, in works of fine art.” The term “art merchant” includes an auctioneer who sells suck works at public auction. N.Y. Arts & Cult. Aff. Law § 11.01(2).
The Los Angeles Times has apparently unmasked the artist who created a poster featuring President Obama portrayed as "The Joker" from "The Dark Night" of the Batman movie series. The poster included the word "socialism" underneath the rendering of Obama.
The artist is not a right-leaning conservative as one might expect. The artist, now “revealed” to be Firas Alkhateeb, is a 20-year-old college student from Chicago and is apparently a supporter of the liberal Congressman and former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Even in light of his support for the liberal Congressman, Alkhateeb says he did not vote in the 2008 presidential election.
After initially posting the picture on Flickr, Alkhateeb was concerned that he might be sued for copyright infringement. According to the article in the LA Times, however, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that defends digital rights, pointed out that Alkhateeb has a strong fair-use defense if he were to be sued.
As some of this blog’s readers may be aware, the doctrine of fair use essentially allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the copyright holders in certain circumstances such as scholarship or a critical review of the copyrighted materials. Beyond the scope of this entry is the issue of whether political commentary included in a visual artwork such as the “Joker” poster would be, in fact, likely to receive the protections of fair use under the copyright laws.
The LA Times article can be found in its entirety here.
The Boston Globe reported today that a retired criminal defense lawyer, Robert M. Mardirosian, was sentenced to seven years in federal prison for “possessing six Impressionist paintings that he knew were stolen in 1978 from a house in the Berkshires in what is believed to be the largest private art theft in Massachusetts history.”
United States District Court Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf had strong words for the defendant, apparently telling him: “You started as a lawyer . . . [a]s far I'm concerned, you became a glorified fence." The case stems from charges that Mardirosian took six Impressionist paintings that had allegedly been stolen by one of his clients from a Berkshires house and stored them in Europe.
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