Copyright Law

"Argott is also, unquestionably, an advocate"

Posted on July 24, 2010
The Art of the Steal is out this week on DVD. DVD Talk reviews it here:"There are, after all, real questions to be asked about who 'owns' art, and who has the 'right' to see it; are we supposed to cheer Barnes for amassing this tremendous collection and then proudly, spitefully keeping it away from the general public? (The collection didn't become available for viewing by non-students until 1961, and then only a couple of days a week, by appointment...

"Physical possession of an object as a requirement for an acquisition is no longer necessary"

Posted on July 24, 2010
More on MoMA's acquisition of the @ symbol (mentioned earlier here).

"Untangling the Salander Mess"

Posted on July 24, 2010
Eileen Kinsella gives it a shot in ARTnews.

Portrait of Wally Settlement

Posted on July 23, 2010
I'm a little late on this one, but, after more than a decade, the Portrait of Wally case finally settled. Here is Randy Kennedy in the NYT. Here is Lee Rosenbaum and, as Lee says, Judith Dobrzynski has owned the story. Some thoughts from Ray Dowd here.

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"When a university sues an artist . . ."

Posted on July 23, 2010
" . . . while asking the courts to trump the freedom of speech and expression with the university?s commercial trademark rights, that university has, regrettably, lost sight of its mission."Daniel Moore writes about his lawsuit with the University of Alabama, now in its sixth year.

Another Sad Deaccessioning Story

Posted on July 19, 2010
The NYT's Randy Kennedy reports that Thomas Eakins's "Gross Clinic,' tragically deaccessioned a couple years ago by Thomas Jefferson University, has benefited from an "ambitious restoration effort" at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. What's more, the newly restored work will go on view this week at the museum in a special exhibition entitled "An Eakins Masterpiece Restored: Seeing ?The Gross Clinic? Anew...

"I elected to have the court decide the disputed amount, so I could pay that amount ..."

Posted on July 19, 2010
". . . and return to the more important process of exposing and redressing, in the courts, Emigrant management's misconduct."Asher Edelman is ordered to pay Emigrant Bank about $560,000 "to resolve a dispute over loans used to buy artwork."On the more important process of exposing etc...

"Australians investing in art for retirement face a potential shift in rules that could force them to sell their collections"

Posted on July 19, 2010
Business Week has the story.

Rose Roundup

Posted on July 19, 2010
The Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers has a brief round-up of views on the latest at the Rose.On this silly notion that it's somehow wrong to refer to what they propose to do as "loans," let me just point out that that's always how people have referred to these sorts of arrangements...

Rivers Archive Update

Posted on July 18, 2010
Kate Taylor in the NYT this weekend: "After it came to light last week that films and videotapes made by the artist Larry Rivers included footage of his two daughters naked, New York University informed his foundation that it did not want those materials included as part of the archive it was purchasing...

NYC Art Vendor Rules Upheld

Posted on July 17, 2010
Story here.

"The picture is the same whether it is said to be old or new, genuine or fake, an original or a copy"

Posted on July 14, 2010
Michael Kimmelman on the "Fakes" show in London:"The work was a forgery. Science proved it. And so there it hangs in the show, on a wall of shame, surrounded like a mug shot by the evidence of its true crime. "But look, never mind what the label says, and you may notice something else about the picture, too, some other truth...

"We're not talking about T-shirts. We're talking about fine art"

Posted on July 14, 2010
The latest on the Alabama-Daniel Moore trademark suit.

Linkage

Posted on July 14, 2010
Banksy's "transformational work of art.""Don't f- - k with me -- I am warning you."NPR on Robert Wittman.

Busy Week for Art Litigation

Posted on July 12, 2010
Josh Baer has the round-up:The Netherlands Gallery Mourmans has sued MoMA, NS International, and Lloyds of London alleging they "wrongfully failed to honor terms of an agreement concerning the loan of seven works of art by the artist Ron Arad" in that they "failed to provide the proper security or supervision to protect the plaintiff?s works...

Russian Curators Convicted

Posted on July 12, 2010
BBC news reports that "two men who organised a controversial art exhibition in Moscow in 2007 have been found guilty by a Russian court of inciting hatred." No jail time, but fines of several thousand dollars each.The Moscow News adds that the "proceedings took a farcical turn short[ly] after the verdict was announced, when it was claimed that the defendants had smuggled thousands of cockroaches into the chambers in protest against the legal system...

"Yet a museum is much more than its objects"

Posted on July 11, 2010
Mark Gold has a piece on deaccessioning in the latest issue of the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies (portions of which appeared in a 2009 article he did for Museum magazine).He runs through the real-life example of the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass...

"I don?t want it out there in the world. It just makes it worse"

Posted on July 11, 2010
The NYT's Kate Taylor had an interesting story a few days ago on NYU's purchase ("for an undisclosed price") of the archives of artist Larry Rivers. The issue is that the archives include "films and videos of his two adolescent daughters, naked or topless, being interviewed by their father about their developing breasts...

Authenticating Peter Paul Biro

Posted on July 11, 2010
A fantastic piece in last week's New Yorker on Canadian forensic art expert Peter Paul Biro. Highly recommended.

Linkage

Posted on July 11, 2010
Lawsuit over a Banksy mural in Detroit.Here's a twist: artist (rather than collector) sues Park West gallery.Second lawsuit over new NYC rules on selling art in parks.Moscow museum curators on trial for blasphemy.

"We found inks that did not exist in Lennon's lifetime"

Posted on July 11, 2010
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser: "A Wisconsin man is suing a Maui art gallery that sold him nearly $200,000 worth of sketches by Beatle John Lennon?sketches the buyer now believes are counterfeits."

A Young Blogger with a Bright Future

Posted on July 07, 2010
John Stuart Mill weighs in on the Barnes controversy:"[T]here is no fear of robbing a dead man; and no reasonable man who gave his money when living, for the benefit of the community, would have desired that his mode of benefiting the community should be adhered to when a better could be found...

"The [complaint] reveals the kind of misunderstandings that can result when repositories get into the permissions business"

Posted on July 07, 2010
Peter Hirtle on photograper Anne Pearse-Hocker's lawsuit against the Smithsonian:"I can well imagine that a user would see 'worldwide permission' and assume everything is covered. The case is a strong reminder that when making reproductions for patrons and granting permissions, repositories need to be crystal-clear about what they are doing...

"It?s mostly kind of sad"

Posted on July 04, 2010
The Art Market Monitor: Who Steals Art?

"Though the thieves were almost certainly unaware of this fact, the stolen 'Caravaggio' is a fake"

Posted on July 04, 2010
Noah Charney on the stolen artwork recovered last week.

"Many nonprofit organizations in New York are deeply concerned they will lose significant contributions from wealthy donors . . ."

Posted on July 03, 2010
". . . if a pending state budget proposal becomes law."

"Artists Need to Keep Good Records"

Posted on July 03, 2010
At the Huffington Post, Daniel Grant explains why, and adds:"The Joan Mitchell Foundation (155 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013, 212-524-0100, www.joanmitchellfoundation.org) has established a grant program enabling artists to document their work...

Linkage

Posted on July 03, 2010
Art schools sued for fraud.Art and pension funds.Ming Dynasty painting stolen."The National Gallery London is about to open its worst exhibition ever."

Up with UPMIFA

Posted on July 03, 2010
The Wall Street Journal's Erica Orden reports that New York is about to pass a bill that would allow nonprofits "to spend certain endowment funds without court approval." Current law, she explains, "forbids organizations such as museums and universities from spending the principal of an endowment fund when it falls below its original value, or 'underwater' ...

Art Patronage as Money Laundering

Posted on July 01, 2010
Jim Johnson's pragmatist take on the controversy surrounding the fact that the Tate gets lots of money from British Petroleum:"I think we need to dispense with the moralism. What precisely is the alternative you propose? Government funding for the arts? Some sort of list of 'socially responsible' patrons? (How, in constructing such a list, do we decide which sins are the most egregious?) The art world ...

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