Copyright Law

More on the Arbus lawsuit

Posted on April 10, 2008
From Randy Kennedy in today's New York Times.Josh Baer says "sources close to the deal report that Phillips (as noted in the catalogue) 'has guaranteed a minimum price to the owner of the sale and has direct financial interest in such lots.' Unlike media reports of the value being in the hundreds of thousands, the estimated value of the sale was approx $1...

"A bill to do something about a discriminatory tax situation that?s been affecting artists for 40 years"

Posted on April 10, 2008
A piece in the Chicago Reader on arts funding in Illinois includes the following:"As things stand now, anyone who owns a piece of art can donate it to a charity and take a nice fat tax deduction equivalent to its current market value. But if the artist who created the work donates it, only the cost of materials can be deducted...

Arbus auction off

Posted on April 09, 2008
Newsday reports: "[Phillips] auction house has canceled a New York sale of Diane Arbus photographs amid a lawsuit accusing their owner of taking advantage of the man who sold them to him."Previous post on the lawsuit here.

"Simply to give with no tax benefit to himself is a remarkable gesture"

Posted on April 08, 2008
The U.K. Times has a story on David Hockney's donation of a major painting to the Tate (reportedly -- at 40' x 15' -- the largest ever given to the museum). He calls on more artists to follow suit: "More artists should donate. They should think about it...

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"As a lot of people figure out, it's really complicated to run an art museum"

Posted on April 07, 2008
A couple of interesting articles toward the end of last week on the rise of private museums: Lauren Schuker in the Wall Street Journal ("The Firestorm Over Private Museums") and Kate Taylor in the New York Sun ("At Odds Over Art"). Eli Broad's recent announcement that he would not be leaving his art collection to LACMA seems to have prompted a lot of thinking by collectors about how best to dispose of their art collections.

Reversal

Posted on April 07, 2008
A London appellate court has reversed a decision awarding co-authorship rights to a former member of the 60's rock band Procol Harum over the song "A Whiter Shade of Pale," discussed earlier here. Apparently he waited too long to assert the claim.

"What experts described as the largest private sale of art ever"

Posted on April 07, 2008
In Friday's New York Times, Carol Vogel reported that "the heirs of the legendary dealer Ileana Sonnabend have parted with some $600 million worth of paintings and sculptures in two transactions to cover their estate taxes."More from Kate Taylor in the New York Sun...

Boetti Bout

Posted on April 07, 2008
Josh Baer:"In what is turning into a very nasty case there have been lawsuits filed between Sperone Westwater and the Archivio Alighiero Boetti (and some family members) over the authenticity of works exhibited and sold by the gallery in 2002. After being sued in Italy the gallery filed a detailed suit in NYC outlining allegations of reneged authentications over Boetti artworks shown and sold in the US...

Fisk to Appeal

Posted on April 07, 2008
The AP is reporting that Fisk is going to appeal Judge Lyle's recent ruling in the O'Keeffe case. "The school said in a news release Thursday the order threatens the safekeeping of the collection."Lee Rosenbaum was tipped off about this several weeks ago.

Intrepid Lawsuit

Posted on April 04, 2008
The AP reports that the Intrepid Museum is facing a lawsuit claiming that it lost several World War II-era photographs that had been loaned to it. The plaintiff says the photos were worth about $175,000.For its part, the museum is playing the Guilt Card: its president is quoted as saying, "We are surprised and disappointed to hear of the filing of this lawsuit have referred this matter to our insurance representatives...

In the long run . . .

Posted on April 02, 2008
At Andrew Sullivan's blog, an interesting take on the recent New York magazine article on Larry Salander, which made the case that his fall was caused by his (overly) ambitious project to create a new market for old master work:"I don't have a lot of sympathy for those who bemoan contemporary art and seek a return to the old-masters...

"Recognizing a descendible postmortem property right has federal estate tax consequences that state legislators appear not to have considered"

Posted on April 02, 2008
In the Yale Law Journal "Pocket Part," Mitchell Gans, Bridget Crawford, and Jonathan Blattmachr look at the estate tax implications of the recently enacted California publicity rights legislation:"Legislators, proponents of these laws, and legal commentators have overlooked two significant federal estate tax consequences of these new state law property rights...

Marilyn Monroe News

Posted on April 01, 2008
The Wall Street Journal Law Blog has the latest in the Marilyn Monroe right of publicity saga: "District Judge Margaret Morrow in Los Angeles sided with the families of photographers, ruling that Monroe was a New Yorker, meaning she has no right of publicity (whereas in California, right of publicity survives a celebrity?s death)...

"Without freedom, no art"

Posted on April 01, 2008
From today's New York Law Journal ($): "An unlicensed street vendor, who sold tiles decorated with photographic reproductions, was entitled to First Amendment protection, a Manhattan [criminal court] judge has ruled. The court held that the peddler's 'creations' amounted to 'artwork' within the meaning of a 1997 injunction, in which New York City agreed to permanently refrain from enforcing licensing requirements against vendors who sold 'paintings, photographs, prints and/or sculpture...

"Seems like it might be more efficient to set prices through a virtual prediction-type market for works displayed on the web"

Posted on March 30, 2008
Lawprof Larry Ribstein spends some time in Chelsea, then posts on "the art world's approach to retail."

"I'm an artist and do not enjoy the litigation process, but if someone is wrongfully taking from my creations, I must defend my art."

Posted on March 27, 2008
The New York Post reports that pop star Pink has settled the copyright infringement lawsuit brought against her by artist Vladimir Kush, discussed last summer here.

Esmerian Sale

Posted on March 26, 2008
ARTINFO.com reports: "The folk art collector Ralph Esmerian will not donate his version of Edward Hicks?s painting The Peaceable Kingdom with the Leopard of Serenity (1848) to the American Folk Art Museum as intended, but will instead sell it at Sotheby?s in a May sale of American paintings, Bloomberg reports...

"The issue is fantastic"

Posted on March 26, 2008
Lawyer Brad Parker on the Rauschenberg-trash lawsuit:"I'd love to try this case - the issue is fantastic. If Rauschenberg throws away his work product, does the law of abandoned property apply? Does the artist retain the right to declare what work is authentic? Does the artist still own his artistic materials - even if he discards them as unusable or undesirable? And how do those questions apply to long deceased artists? For example, can an auction house sell a Rodin sketch as an authentic Rodin if it was merely discarded work product that he used to create a completed piece of art?"

Pixxxellated

Posted on March 25, 2008
Rebecca Tushnet writes about artist Adam Connelly, who, as she puts it, "paints pictures of pornographic images, pixellated so that it's our minds, not the paint, providing the salacious details." Does he have a good fair use defense to his use of the underlying images? "It's pretty clear that he would, given the change in meaning and the change in quality of reproduction...

"He could be upwards of $100 million in debt"

Posted on March 25, 2008
Another lengthy story on the collapse of Salander-O?Reilly Galleries, this time from New York magazine. (Here is another recent one, from Portfolio magazine.)

Gardner Heist Central

Posted on March 25, 2008
The Boston Herald has launched a special website dedicated to the Gardner Museum heist.

"The case is groundbreaking because there is no real precedent on these facts under the Visual Artists Rights Act"

Posted on March 25, 2008
The Southwest Florida News-Press has more on the Florida lawsuit involving work taken from Robert Rauschenberg's trash and then sold (mentioned earlier here and here).

Barnes Argument

Posted on March 25, 2008
There was a hearing yesterday in the petitions to reopen the Barnes Foundation case. Randy Kennedy had a brief report in today's New York Times. The Philadelphia Inquirer is here. The AP is here.According to the Inquirer, "Ott asked no questions during oral arguments yesterday, saying only that a decision would be issued 'as expeditiously' as possible...

"Proceed with caution and seek guidance"

Posted on March 21, 2008
Some art-buying advice from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald (yes, that Patrick Fitzgerald), who this week announced a number of indictments for "two art-fraud schemes that reaped a combined $5 million." Bloomberg has the story here. Fitzgerald says "literally thousands of people in different countries and on different continents may come to learn that when they thought they bought an original work signed by Picasso or Dalí or Chagall, they in fact bought a fake...

More on Photographs as Derivative Works

Posted on March 21, 2008
I've mentioned a recent District Court decision that had copyright lawyers scratching their heads: the case had held that photographs of artworks are derivative works of those artworks. Now Bill Patry notes another District Court decision that comes out the other way...

$131 million

Posted on March 19, 2008
Carol Vogel reports that it is a condition of Leonard Lauder's $131 million gift to the Whitney that "the museum not ... sell its Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue at 75th Street for an extended period, although he declined to specify how long...

Barnes Update

Posted on March 18, 2008
The Philadelphia Inquirer's City Hall blog reports that "Philadelphia's lease with the Barnes Foundation calls for the transfer by May of the site currently occupied by the city's juvenile detention facility ... on the Ben Franklin Parkway. But city officials said Monday that the property won't be vacated until late summer...

Dr. No Strikes Again

Posted on March 18, 2008
From the New York Times: "Some 30 paintings by such masters as Monet, Cézanne and Corot and a Rodin sculpture were stolen from the home of an antiques dealer near Paris, police officials said. Five masked gunmen broke into the home in Le Pecq, west of Paris, in the early hours, subdued the dealer and fled with the art, the officials said...

"If the allegations are true, the collapse of Salander-O?Reilly would be among the most massive art frauds in history"

Posted on March 17, 2008
In the April issue of Portfolio magazine, Suzanna Andrews has a lengthy piece on the unraveling of Salander-O'Reilly gallery.

Kristen (UPDATED)

Posted on March 17, 2008
An interesting intellectual property angle has emerged in connection with the Governor Spitzer story -- the use by news organizations of photos of Ashley Dupre (aka"Kristen") without permission. See story here. As an initial matter, Rebecca Tushnet points out that, since presumably she didn't take the pictures of herself, Dupre may not own the copyright in them, unless "by transfer" from whoever did take them...

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