Copyright Law

Brief Rose

Posted on February 03, 2009
I didn't get a chance today to mention this excellent piece by Daniel Grant on the Rose closing. As he was with Grant's story on the Prince-Cariou lawsuit last week, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento is impressed. The piece covers a lot of ground, but for now I'll just highlight this passage:"A larger question may be whether selling the contents of a museum to benefit the parent institution is good economics...

Weekend Rose

Posted on February 02, 2009
Quick end-of-the-weekend Rose roundup.Roberta Smith says the move is "an act of breathtaking stealth and presumption":"In a just and moral society, art is crucial to our understanding of freedom, difference and individual agency. The message out of Brandeis University last week ? to its own students and to the world ? was that when the going gets tough, none of this matters...

Midday Rose

Posted on February 02, 2009
The Art Market Monitor has some thoughts in response to Roberta Smith's paean to the indispensability of art, which I mentioned last night:"It?s hard to argue with this position. The destruction of the Rose Museum is a terrible act. What seems to amplify the problem is the very success of art in recent years in market terms...

Diddy Suit

Posted on February 02, 2009
The Boston Globe's Jonathan Saltzman reports that glass artist Tom Patti has sued "hip-hop and fashion mogul" Sean "Diddy" Combs in US District Court in Springfield, Massachusetts, claiming that the packaging for Combs's "Unforgivable" cologne infringes the copyrights on two "tabletop glass sculptures [Patti] created in the early 1980s called 'Compacted Gray With Clear and Ribs' and 'Modulated Solar Airframe...

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Out of Time

Posted on February 02, 2009
Interesting art-related decision [$] out of the Eastern District of New York recently (Sands v. Bernstein, 07 Civ. 9824). Plaintiffs had a painting rejected by the Warhol authentication board in 1997. That same year, they entered into a letter agreement with the defendant under which, if he was able to get the decision reversed, they would sell the work to him for $65,000...

Outliers

Posted on February 02, 2009
The New York Observer carries a review of philosopher Denis Dutton's new book The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution which includes the following:"An entertaining chapter on famous frauds tells the story of Eric Hebborn, who forged 'new' works by old masters suffused with such deep understanding of the artists he copied that connoisseurs still find his work ravishing (and maybe you do, too?his fakes are thought to be on display in museums all over the world)...

Postmortem Publicity Rights

Posted on February 02, 2009
I've mentioned the debate between SMU law professor Joshua Tate and the team of Mitchell Gans, Bridget Crawford, and Jonathan Blattmachr regarding the taxation and disposition of postmortem publicity rights. Tate now has a new article on the subject available for download here.

Rose Break (UPDATED)

Posted on February 02, 2009
Let's take a look at some other art law stories besides the closing of the Rose. Start with a settlement of the closely-watched lawsuit mentioned in the "update" here. The New York Times's Randy Kennedy reports:"Two museums announced Monday that they had reached a settlement with heirs of the original owner of two Picasoo paintings ...

Numbers

Posted on January 30, 2009
Financial journalist Felix Salmon points to this "astonishing" article by Judith Dobrzynski at the Daily Beast on Brandeis's overall financial situation.He's not buying it:"[H]ere are the numbers: the Brandeis endowment was $712 million in June, and is $530 million now...

"Had it not been for the deaccessioning rules . . . the Rose Art Museum might well have lived"

Posted on January 30, 2009
Felix Salmon gets it straight from the horse's mouth (the horse in this case being Brandeis director of communications in the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, David Nathan) that, as he puts in the title to his latest post on the subject, the "deaccessioning rules doomed the Rose Art Museum":"Brandeis has been saying that it's not going to be selling off all of the Rose Art Museum's art at once -- or even, necessarily, any of it at all...

"Did the Deaccessioning Police Doom the Rose?"

Posted on January 29, 2009
The Art Market Monitor says the answer seems to be yes.

Think about it

Posted on January 29, 2009
I want to say a little more about why, contra my friend Sergio, I think it's unhelpful to speak of the Brandeis decision as a "deaccessioning."It seems to me that the word is simply a conversation-stopper. Its function is to prevent debate, prevent discussion...

Grey Area

Posted on January 29, 2009
Daniel Grant has a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the Richard Prince lawsuit. He points out that "the overall trend of court decisions between 1989 and 2005 (and the present) is to allow greater latitude for the claim of the new artwork being transformative...

"You can't do this piecemeal"

Posted on January 28, 2009
In a post yesterday, I said: "I wonder if the taboo against selling individual pieces might not have contributed, in some small way, to Brandeis's decision to close the museum? If they could have sold five or ten of the most valuable works without controversy, might the trustees have reached a different conclusion?" This morning Richard Lacayo posts an interview with Michael Rush, the Rose's director, which includes the following: "You can't solve a shortfall problem by selling, say, our Lichtenstein and still maintain yourself legally and ethically as a museum...

"All or nothing, that seems to be the ethical landscape"

Posted on January 28, 2009
Derek Fincham had the same reaction I had to the Rose news: "the deaccessioning hurdles may perversely make it more feasible for an institution in financial or other difficulty to completely shut down, rather than sell parts of a collection."As if on cue, Tyler Green then shows up to inform us that "selling some of the Rose Art Museum's art collection is not an improvement...

The more I hear about the Rose story . . .

Posted on January 28, 2009
. . . the more it seems to me that the whole thing is just a way to get around the prissy fatwa against deaccessioning. Geoff Edgers has a preview up of his story in tomorrow's Boston Globe, which includes the following:"Brandeis provost Marty Krauss also shed new light on the reasoning behind the closure, which is scheduled for late summer...

In other news

Posted on January 28, 2009
Some non-Rose art law stories worth briefly mentioning:Artist Maurice Agis's manslaughter trial is under way in England.Park West Gallery, accused of ripping off collectors, has decided the best defense is a good offense.The Financial Times on how art-backed lending is faring these days.

Morning Rose

Posted on January 27, 2009
Geoff Edgers has a fuller story on last night's Brandeis bombshell in this morning's Boston Globe, including the following:"A Brandeis spokesman said that the Massachusetts attorney general's office ... has been informed of the move and will not block it...

Evening Rose

Posted on January 27, 2009
Lots to take in on the Rose story.First, an important correction from Geoff Edgers: it turns out the Massachusetts attorney general's office has not signed off on the move.More from Randy Kennedy and Carol Vogel in the New York Times:"Emily LaGrassa, director of communications for the state attorney general ...

WOW: Rose Art Museum Shutting Down

Posted on January 26, 2009
The Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers and Peter Schworm are reporting tonight that "Brandeis University will close its Rose Art Museum and sell off a 6,000-object collection that includes work by such contemporary masters as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Nam June Paik...

"Reminding us again, that when you're on vacation, take extra care when purchasing art"

Posted on January 24, 2009
Derek Fincham has the latest lesson, this time involving the work of Salvador Dali.See here for a previous example.

"One count of institutional vandalsim"

Posted on January 23, 2009
The Carnegie Museum of Art security guard who slashed a Vija Celmins painting with a key last spring has plead guilty and will be sentenced on April 7. The guard "has been seeking mental health treatment since his arrest."

"Prince himself ... unapologetically problematises issues of authorship"

Posted on January 21, 2009
The Art Newspaper has more on the Richard Prince lawsuit, mentioned earlier here.People keep mentioning Blanch v. Koons, but it's worth noting that Koons's use of the underlying image in that case seems quite different from the "purer" kind of appropriation that Prince is up to here (although admittedly I've only seen a couple of the relevant works)...

Fairey Use?

Posted on January 21, 2009
The hunt is on for the photographic source of Shepard Fairey's iconic Obama image, and, as Mike Madison says, now "the fair use fun can begin." Madison gets it started; he thinks the photographer may well have a good claim: "Sure, the photo is 'transformed' to a sizable extent, which pushes the fair use needle to Fairey?s side...

"This is hardly the time to subsidize a new 'tourist magnet' museum"

Posted on January 19, 2009
Philadelphia Inquirer art critic Edward Sozanski: "As the city government wrestles with a staggering projected budget deficit, the folly of moving the Barnes Foundation from Merion to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway becomes even more egregious."

Puccio Suit

Posted on January 15, 2009
Josh Baer: "Puccio Gallery in NYC has been sued for $500,000 by Deborah Benjamin alleging they sold her fake works by Picasso and Milton Avery."

Enter Sandman

Posted on January 14, 2009
Over at his Deaccessioning Blog, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento sizes up the state of the debate, and offers a few thoughts of his own, focusing primarily on the case of emergency deaccessionings by failing institutions (which he likens to a "band-aid on a bullet-hole")...

"Gen. Nistri said there was evidence the smuggler intended to try to sell the works outside Italy"

Posted on January 14, 2009
CBC News:"Italian police have recovered 10 masterpieces stolen in 2004 .... The paintings had been stolen from the halls of Santo Spirito in Sassia, a religious complex near the Vatican. They were discovered in good condition, wrapped in newspaper in the trailer of a suspected art smuggler ...

"I'll hazard a guess that Obama is unlikely to pursue action against the thong makers"

Posted on January 14, 2009
The Guardian looks at the right of publicity as it applies to politicians.

"The current rule seems both incomplete and overly restrictive. Surely there?s an opportunity here for reasoned reform"

Posted on January 13, 2009
Jen Graves has an interesting podcast interview with Jori Finkel, who wrote the New York Times article on deaccessioning discussed here.

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