Copyright Law

When an insurance company pays a stolen art claim . . .

Posted on October 21, 2010
. . . and the work is later found, who gets it -- the victim of the theft or the insurer?Here's a case out of Massachusetts that comes down in favor of the theft victim, relying on the "plain and unambiguous language" of an agreement between the parties.

"It's a bizarre situation, to say the least"

Posted on October 21, 2010
A $1 million Gris painting, stolen in St. Louis six years ago, has been found in Florida.

"It?s not common for important philanthropic prizes to go to people whose work involves criminal trespass"

Posted on October 21, 2010
The NYT's Randy Kennedy reports that the TED conference has given its 2011 annual prize to French street artist J R.

"One expert describes the forgeries as 'gold standard'"

Posted on October 21, 2010
The Guardian reports that "panic is spreading through the art world following the discovery of forgeries among major 20th-century paintings sold in recent years by leading auctioneers and dealers worldwide, including Christie's in London."Art Theft Central: "Unfortunately, this art forgery case underscores the need for art connoisseurship and authentication to utilize the current scientific technologies to confirm a work's provenance and history...

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"One thing?s for sure: I?ll have a captive audience."

Posted on October 21, 2010
The New Yorker on Faith Ringgold's Rikers Island mural.

We Demand That You Not Close the Museum You Are Not Closing (a continuing series)

Posted on October 21, 2010
Mediabistro.com: Rose Art Museum Mounts Major Exhibition.

Even though they are not fungible assets, we deaccession artworks all the time

Posted on October 21, 2010
WNYC did a piece on the suspension of sanctions against the National Academy Museum (mentioned yesterday here). They talk to Lee Rosenbaum (who says "museum quality works are the public's patrimony"), Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento (who points out that one of the things we're talking about when we talk about the dreaded "operating expenses" is people's livelihoods), and Kaywin Feldman, president of the AAMD...

Please, sir, may I have another?

Posted on October 20, 2010
I've been distracted the last couple of days by some important -- though, as it turned out, utterly depressing -- business up in the Bronx. So I'm late getting to the news that the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad (not to mention repulsive and Stalinist) National Academy Museum, having been duly punished, and having publicly repented for its sins ("Never again," says the museum's director), has had the sanctions against it lifted by the AAMD...

Barnes Update

Posted on October 18, 2010
The Philadelphia Inquirer's Stephan Salisbury tells us that construction of the new Barnes museum is "proceeding at a rapid clip."I always appreciate his non-melodramatic way of describing the move:"Wealthy collector Albert C. Barnes installed the work in the Merion gallery almost a century ago and stipulated that it could not be moved...

"He eventually confessed . . ."

Posted on October 18, 2010
". . . saying his motivation for the theft was to exact revenge against the university for his perceived mistreatment while an employee there."The former director of LIU's Hillwood Museum was sentenced to a year in prison for stealing Egyptian artifacts from the museum...

"An eclectic reader's dream"

Posted on October 15, 2010
A nice review for Noah Charney's "Stealing the Mystic Lamb" in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Well-written and thorough, this book reminds us of the influence and fragility of art, our veniality and heroism, and the delights found in both the beautiful and the strange...

"I was painting with watercolors on my own store-bought paper that I had taped to a temporary wall surrounding a construction site."

Posted on October 15, 2010
Artist Julie Torres is arrested on graffiti charges.

"A chorus of confusion"

Posted on October 15, 2010
Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the New York Board of Regents, was on the Brian Lehrer show last week, trying to clear up the confusion around the expiration of the Regents' "emergency regulations," which press reports are incorrectly characterizing as now allowing museums to use sales proceeds to cover operating expenses...

Estate Tax Insanity

Posted on October 14, 2010
Professor Bainbridge has the latest.

"Because of the sharing arrangement, more people in the South can enjoy and study the Stieglitz Collection, which was the donor?s intent"

Posted on October 13, 2010
I'm a bit late getting to this, but Fisk has submitted a revised version of its agreement with the Crystal Bridges Museum, to address some concerns the court had with an earlier version. As the NYT reports, "the university, which has longstanding financial difficulties, is seeking to share ownership of the collection with [Crystal Bridges]...

"At what point did acquiring performance art switch from owning objects associated with the actions, such as videos and photographs . . ."

Posted on October 13, 2010
" . . . to possessing the 'idea' behind the piece?"The Financial Times on the market for performance art. Tino Sehgal gets a mention:"Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal has evidently turned collecting criteria on their heads. He sells his performance art pieces by means of verbal transactions in the presence of a lawyer with no written contract...

Linkage (catch-up edition)

Posted on October 13, 2010
Some Friedmanesque Themes in the Arts.Lawsuit over Calder mobile in Chicago.An interview with Noah Charney (who has a new book out).Has street art sold out?

Prison Sentences in Egyptian Van Gogh Theft

Posted on October 13, 2010
But not for the thieves:"Eleven employees of Egypt?s cultural ministry were sentenced to three years in prison for negligence that led to the theft of a valuable van Gogh painting from a Giza museum in August, Reuters reported. Among those employees whose sentences were announced Tuesday was Mohsen Shaalan, a deputy culture minister who heads the fine arts division of the ministry...

"The whole game of finding support just started to seem so childish. So I decided to grow up and became a marijuana farmer."

Posted on October 12, 2010
The NYT's Randy Kennedy reports on a California art foundation that plans to support its activities through the sale of (medical) marijuana. The Nonprofit Law Prof Blog notes that the "article mentions drug-crime concerns as a possible problem, but does not talk about whether the pot-growing operation will generate unrelated business taxable income" (on which see here).

"It seems to me that museums, whether public or private, ought to take a stand against thuggery, and ought not surrender to the thugs? demands"

Posted on October 11, 2010
I mentioned last week the story of a woman who was arrested for destroying an artwork at a Colorado museum "that some observers say depicts Jesus engaged in a sex act."Now comes news that the museum will not re-hang the work, citing safety concerns. Eugene Volokh is disappointed -- "behavior that is rewarded is repeated, and I would hope that museums would see the costs of providing further encouragement to those who would vandalize museums (or for that matter threaten to vandalize them) -- and adds this bit of constitutional commentary:"[T]he Establishment Clause doesn?t prohibit the display of allegedly blasphemous or antireligious works in government museums, just like it doesn?t prohibit the display of pro-religious works in government museums...

"NY State's version of UPMIFA is 'more donor-favorable than perhaps any in the nation'"

Posted on October 10, 2010
Cristina del Rivero has a concise summary of the new law.

"For several days the museum has faced protests for displaying the work"

Posted on October 07, 2010
The NYT: "Woman Arrested in Colorado After Destroying Artwork."

Critics Say A Lot Of Things

Posted on October 05, 2010
A few weeks ago, I mentioned a New York Times article that misleadingly suggested that the expiration of New York's "emergency" deaccessioning regulations would allow museums "to sell art to cover operating costs." As I said then: "The expiration of the emergency regulations just means that we go back to the existing, non-emergency regulations, which also prohibit the sale of art to cover operating expenses...

"How could Jefferson sell its heritage?"

Posted on October 04, 2010
The Cherry Hill Courier Post has more on the tragic deaccessioning of The Gross Clinic: "Dr. Warren V. Harrer of Haddonfield, ... a Jefferson alumnus, admitted that he was 'initially sad since "The Gross Clinic" has been an integral part of Jefferson lore...

Comeback

Posted on October 01, 2010
The "Zaretskians" on the LA MOCA board seem to have gotten their act together: "The Museum of Contemporary Art announced Thursday that it finished its fiscal year with a $5.5-million surplus and has used most of it to continue replenishing the endowment it had illegally raided during nearly a decade of overspending...

"Copyright law needs to be simpler, understandable, and more flexible to change with the times"

Posted on October 01, 2010
The report of the Copyright Principles Project, led by Berkeley's Pamela Samuelson, is out. Press release here. You can read the full report here. Mike Madison comments here. Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento here.

"Art College President's Compensation Reached Nearly $2-Million in 2008"

Posted on October 01, 2010
The Chronicle of Higher Ed: "The college paid Ms. Wallace?s current husband, Glenn E. Wallace, $289,235 in 2008 for his role as senior vice president for college resources. Also on the payroll was her son John Paul Rowan ($233,843 for consulting; he is now a vice president who oversees the college?s Hong Kong campus), daughter Marisa Rowan ($101,493; director of the equestrian programs), daughter-in-law Elizabeth Rowan ($85,494; director of external relations at the Hong Kong campus), and mother, May L...

Pebble Beach Update

Posted on October 01, 2010
"Two men who said they had a world-class collection of artwork stolen from their rented Pebble Beach home are accusing the Monterey County Sheriff's Office and its chief spokesman in a new lawsuit of publicly defaming them."

"The distinction between 'works of art' and signs that somehow are not artistic strikes me as unconstitutionally vague"

Posted on September 30, 2010
Eugene Volokh on sign regulation in St. Louis.

They Should Be Kicked Out of the AAM Immediately!

Posted on September 30, 2010
"A museum of modern art in Germany said Wednesday it would sell its own art collection to avert closure."

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