Copyright Law

"It was bound to happen eventually"

Posted on January 13, 2009
Daryl Lang of Photo District News has more on the Richard Prince lawsuit, mentioned earlier here.Lang says the case "is similar to a 2003 lawsuit by photographer Andrea Blanch against artist Jeff Koons" for his use of "a photograph of a woman?s legs as part of a painted collage...

The Museum of Underappreciated Art

Posted on January 12, 2009
A deaccessioning thought experiment from Felix Salmon.

Another Park West Lawsuit

Posted on January 12, 2009
This one in Michigan state court. Detroit News story here.Previous post on Park West here.

Salander Update

Posted on January 12, 2009
Bloomberg's Philip Boroff and Lindsay Pollock have an update on the Salander-O?Reilly story, including news that a New York state grand jury is considering criminal charges against Salander.

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A Minor Dismissal

Posted on January 09, 2009
I mentioned earlier that Sotheby's and Halsey Minor were fighting over whether he could bring a separate action against the auction house in California, in addition to the one they brought against him here in New York. Sotheby's has now won that battle...

Trust Yourself

Posted on January 09, 2009
Newcurator.com points to a piece by the director of the Addison Gallery arguing against the National Academy deaccessioning. It's of the "held-in-trust" genre ("When trustees and curators make the decision to accept a work of art in a museum?s collection, they agree to hold it in trust for the education and enjoyment of the general public...

This and that

Posted on January 09, 2009
Lots of art law in the latest Baer Faxt:A $450,000 suit against furniture dealer Craig van den Brulles of Capital Furnishings in Nolita alleging the Henry Moore plaintiff purchased was not authentic. Says Josh: "Note: maybe don't buy art from decorators?""Sources report that dealers and collectors have been trekking down to the NY Grand Jury to testify against Larry Salander recently...

No Cigar

Posted on January 08, 2009
The close call on the orphan works bill made the Library Journal's Top Ten Stories of 2008. Here's their assessment for 2009:"With economic and international crises sure to command Congress? attention in 2009, it?s questionable whether orphan works will rise again anytime soon...

"The free-for-all nature of the world of expensive art seems designed to confuse the difference between cheating and simply trying to make a living"

Posted on January 08, 2009
The Art Market Monitor points to this "priceless" story detailing San Francisco dealer Nancy Wandlass's many legal problems.Related story, from a couple of years ago: "Calif. couple left trail of lies, disappointments in art world."

"If you think that number sounded good 18 months ago, think about it now in this economy"

Posted on January 08, 2009
Appellate arguments were heard in the Fisk-O'Keeffe case today. Colby Sledge has the story in The Tennessean. Lee Rosenbaum comments here.

Prince Suit

Posted on January 08, 2009
Cityfile reports that photographer Patrick Cariou has filed a lawsuit against artist Richard Prince, Larry Gagosian, Gagosian Gallery, and Rizzoli books "for using a number of his photographs in Prince's 'Canal Zone' exhibition without his consent, pics that Cariou alleges first appeared in his 2000 book, Yes Rasta...

Have I mentioned how insightful the Art Market Monitor is?

Posted on January 07, 2009
For example.I'm blushing.

Pop Quiz (UPDATED)

Posted on January 07, 2009
If I told you someone held the following views:"The art can be the art anywhere. It can be seen anywhere.""[S]omewhere such as the High or Seattle would be delighted to beef up their American paintings collections, and if/when they do so ..., they'd likely beef up their curatorial focus on such work...

"Admirers sent him food, wine, and money while he was in jail awaiting trial"

Posted on January 06, 2009
Laurie Hurwitz has a story in the current ARTnews on a forthcoming documentary about "the infamous theft of August 21, 1911, when an Italian mason named Vincenzo Peruggia walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa."Here is Peruggia'a Wikipedia enty. Here is a fairly recent piece from Time magazine, which put the theft on their list of the Top 25 crimes of the twentieth century.

A Post That Has Nothing To Do With Deaccessioning

Posted on January 06, 2009
As promised.Here's a roundup of some of the things we missed over the holiday break:The LA Times's Diane Haithman spoke with MOCA's new chief executive, Charles Young, and reported that one of the things he will do is "oversee the museum?s cooperation with the California attorney general?s office, which is looking into the museum's finances following news reports that MOCA had used restricted funds to cover general operating expenses...

Fisk Arguments This Week

Posted on January 06, 2009
The Tennessee Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments this week in the Fisk University-O'Keeffe Museum case. The AP has a summary:"Fisk is appealing the Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle's decision in March that the school broke the terms of O'Keeffe's donation by not keeping the collection on display and by trying to sell parts of it...

Orphan Works Update

Posted on January 06, 2009
Information Today's "Review of the Year 2008" includes the following:"Last fall, a bill strongly supported by libraries, The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Bill of 2008, was passed in the Senate. But the House version had significant differences, and the matter remained unresolved...

Against Prissy Fatwas

Posted on January 06, 2009
Felix Salmon weighs in on the ongoing deaccession debate. He endorses the "Ellis Rule", i.e., that deaccessioning is fine "provided that you ensure that the institution or individual to whom you sell commits in some binding form to equal or higher conservational standards and equal or higher public access...

"The current strictures around deaccessioning do not encourage either intelligent, vigilant conservation or wider public access"

Posted on January 05, 2009
A bit more on deaccessioning. I?ve mentioned on more than one occasion a piece from a couple years back by Adrian Ellis, the founder of AEA Consulting. Adrian and I had a number of interesting conversations around that article when it came out, and, prompted by the latest deaccessioning brouhaha ? and in particular my recent exchange with Richard Lacayo (see here and here, and, for an earlier exchange last summer, ?Rule Utilitarianism in Iowa City? and this response to it) ? he sent along the following over weekend (with permission to post it)...

Where were we?

Posted on January 05, 2009
Right. Deaccessioning.The blog will be back in gear tomorrow, but, to kick off the New Year, here's a terrific post by Michael O'Hare, the Cal-Berkeley professor who was quoted in the New York Times article I discussed before the break. You really should read the whole thing, but a few tastes:"I defy any reader of this [anti-deaccessionist] discourse to infer a goal behind the assertions and pronouncing that could be stated in public with a straight face...

Meet Mr. Pareto

Posted on January 05, 2009
One more roundup of deaccessioning posts, and then it's on to other matters (I promise!).Tyler Green stakes out the position that it's NEVER alright "for arts institutions to sell off art in order to keep the doors open": "If an institution, such as the National Academy or someone else, can't operate effectively enough to stay open, it should close...

Slaloming

Posted on December 31, 2008
Richard Lacayo has a characteristically thoughtful response to my latest post on the deaccession wars. Essentially, he embraces the slippery slope argument:"If the profession didn't discourage museums from using their collections as a piggy bank, I suspect a lot of them would be doing it more often, and not bothering with the hard work of fund raising...

Deaccessioning Debate in the New York Times

Posted on December 29, 2008
Jori Finkel had an evenhanded, full page story in yesterday's Arts & Leisure section under the headline: "Whose Rules Are These, Anyway?" She includes me among those who ask: "Why ... is it so wrong for a museum to sell art from its collection to raise badly needed funds?":"Donn Zaretsky, a New York lawyer who specializes in art cases, has sympathized with the National Academy at [The Art Law Blog], asking why a museum can sell art to buy more art but not to cover overhead costs or a much-needed education center...

The Horror

Posted on December 23, 2008
Christopher Knight relates the gory details of what happened to an Eakins painting previously deaccessioned by the National Academy in order to raise funds for conservation of its paintings collection.It seems -- and I can barely type this through the tears that are staining my keyboard -- it ended up at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art...

"I don?t think any of us were prepared for the aggression with which they came after us" (UPDATED)

Posted on December 23, 2008
In this morning's New York Times, Robin Pogrebin has a detailed look at the circumstances that led to the National Academy's decision to sell a couple of paintings.She points out that the academy is "on a financial precipice": with a $4 million annual budget, it "has been running a deficit for five years, and this year?s shortfall is estimated at around $1 million...

MOCA Chooses the Broad Option (UPDATED 2X)

Posted on December 23, 2008
News out of Los Angeles this morning that "the board of the financially strapped Museum of Contemporary Art has voted to accept a $30-million bailout offer from billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad":"The Broad deal, to be announced Tuesday, ends speculation that the museum might opt to accept a merger offer made last week by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art...

MOCA Update

Posted on December 19, 2008
From Diane Haithman's LA Times story this morning:"The museum's federal tax returns show that early in this decade, it had spent all $20 million of its unrestricted funds to meet routine operating costs. By mid-2007, it had borrowed an additional $7.5 million from 'restricted' accounts, designated by donors for specific uses...

Maybe it depends on how you define "profit"

Posted on December 19, 2008
Brett Littman, the executive director of The Drawing Center, writes in The Art Newspaper about "one of the most complicated and thorny issues in the museum world today," namely, "Who owns a work of art that is produced, developed and partially or fully paid for by an institution? At the end of the exhibition, should the work be given to the artist with no strings attached to sell later in a commercial gallery?"He says there is "no clear consensus" among museum directors, and notes that "some" institutions require the artist (or her dealer) "to reimburse their investment in the production of the work when it is sold...

More on Deaccessioning

Posted on December 17, 2008
My friend Libby Ellis of a href="http://www.aeaconsulting.com/"AEA Consulting/a has been following a href="http://theartlawblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/trust-me.html"the/a a href="http://theartlawblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-it-logical-option-yes-is-it-probable...

"You started as a lawyer. As far I'm concerned, you became a glorified fence"

Posted on December 16, 2008
Robert Mardirosian, convicted last summer of possessing stolen goods, has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison. Story here. For background, see here and here.

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