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Art Law, Briefly

By Intellectual Property Law, Esq.

Lots of art law in the news the last few days:

• If the guards at LACMA tell you you're too close to an artwork, you'd better step back. Christopher Knight says "it's hard to imagine almost any scenario in which an art museum guard might shoot someone, but that bizarre thought keeps bumping around in your brain at BCAM. Needless to say, it has a less than salutary effect on the art experience." Richard Lacayo is surprised by the news: "I would think that the potential for screw ups would discourage the whole idea." More thoughts from Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento here.
• In other museum-guard-related news, a guard at the Carnegie Museum of Art has been charged with vandalizing a million-dollar painting by Vija Celmins, apparently because he didn't like it. Let's make sure that guy never gets near a gun. The painting was on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago.
• New guidelines for collecting antiquities from the Association of Art Museum Directors. Randy Kennedy reports.
• An arrest in a violent art theft in the U.K. last May.
• Police recovered several paintings that were stolen by masked gunmen from a French museum last August.
• The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of a challenge to Randolph College's decision to go co-ed. I never really understood how this issue was supposed to be connected to the Maier Museum deaccessioning controversy, but, in any event, this last obstacle to further sales has now been removed (much to Lee Rosenbaum's dismay). The first of four paintings on the block was sold last week for $7.2 million. A college spokeswoman told the Washington Post it "plans to sell the three remaining paintings, but could not provide a timetable."

Full post as published by The Art Law Blog on June 07, 2008 (boomark / email).