Copyright Law

For some reason they left out the part about the "theft"

Posted on July 01, 2010
I recently stumbled across this New York Times editorial from 2003, in support of the plan to move the Barnes. "Help is at hand," it begins, for the "secluded," "inaccessible" collection. It notes that its $10 million legacy has been spent, the trustees "reduced to fighting bankruptcy and litigation...

"If Christie?s wouldn?t have been found guilty of fraud, I would have literally bought a plane ticket to Argentina . . ."

Posted on July 01, 2010
". . . because at least nobody expects justice there."Halsey Minor wins another lawsuit.

"The fundamental principle is that museums hold art in the public trust"

Posted on June 30, 2010
That must be why they're selling.

"I still have 15,000 [more] photos to liquidate"

Posted on June 29, 2010
Meant to mention before the weekend that the Polaroid Collection sale went forward last week at Sotheby's, and brought in about $10 million. The Minneapolis Star Tribune explained the legal context:"Few even knew the collection was part of Polaroid Corp...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

Stylin'

Posted on June 29, 2010
Mike Madison has some thoughts on the Christo-"influenced" AT&T TV ad (mentioned earlier here). He's not sympathetic to the claim "that copyright protects a creator?s 'style,' rather than particular works," and links to an early post of mine on the subject...

A Recovery

Posted on June 29, 2010
There were reports today of the recovery of a stolen Caravaggio worth $100 million. But Art Theft Central casts some doubt:"Unfortunately, it appears as if the media has not performed much research into the painting's history. Although the Telegraph includes the fact that in '1950, a Moscow art expert declared that the painting in Odessa was in fact the work of Caravaggio,' it fails to add that in 1993 the art historian Sergio Benedetti reattributed the painting to be a contemporary copy (Sergio Benedetti "Caravaggio's 'Taking of Christ', a Masterpiece Rediscovered" The Burlington Magazine, Vol...

Linkage

Posted on June 24, 2010
"Stealing art is shockingly easy. "Edelman vs. Emigrant.Art theft and organized crime."More than two dozen other unhappy customers sued Park West Gallery on Tuesday."BBC Radio on the Carabinieri art squad.

Use Your Judgment

Posted on June 24, 2010
A very interesting law review article from Fordham's Linda Sugin on deaccessioning and university art collections. She diagnoses "the underlying conflict" as one of "inconsistent conceptualization": critics of university deaccessioning "fail to distinguish museums from other institutions that own art but are not primarily museums," while a university that seeks to sell art is looking towards its "complex educational responsibilities" -- in other words, a university's mission is larger than its art collection...

On the Good Old Days

Posted on June 23, 2010
In response to Halsey Minor's musings on the decline of corporate ethics, Terry Martin emails:"I guess Mr. Minor never read Reinhold Niehbuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). Niehbuhr?s principle thesis is that '? a sharp distinction must be drawn between the moral and social behavior of individuals and of social groups, ...

One More Thing

Posted on June 23, 2010
One further thought on Esplund on the Barnes. I think it's useful to distinguish between two sets of arguments against the move.One set of arguments has to do with Barnes's intent. He wanted the collection to stay in Merion. Therefore it should stay in Merion...

New Issue of Journal of Art Crime

Posted on June 21, 2010
The Spring issue of ARCA's Journal of Art Crime is out. My contribution this time is on Stephen Spielberg's stolen Norman Rockwell. An excerpt:"Remarkably, however, it emerged during the course of the litigation that not only should Solomon have known about the 1988 auction, he actually did know all about it...

"For next week, your assignment is to make a list of all your expenses for 2009"

Posted on June 21, 2010
The NYT's Kate Taylor on "a class paid for by the City of New York that is intended to help [artists] turn their creative works into money."

"The city slightly raised its proposed cap this week after opposition to the limits from artists"

Posted on June 21, 2010
"Two artists have filed a free-speech lawsuit against New York City in response to new regulations capping the number of art vendors allowed in Manhattan's busiest parks. Robert Lederman and Jack Nesbitt say that allowing only about 120 vendors in Union Square, Battery Park, the High Line Park and parts of Central Park is unconstitutional...

"Corporations have mutated from organizations that once generated jobs, products and prosperity for the country into voracious, impenetrable monsters"

Posted on June 21, 2010
Halsey Minor is "disgusted by what corporate America has become," and includes a "personal example":"I recently won an $8.57-million court judgment against the auction house Christie's. The jury found Christie's guilty of fraud, among other things, because it refused to return artwork it failed to sell on my behalf...

Internet Scam Targets Art Dealers

Posted on June 21, 2010
The Greensboro News & Record:"Police said the operation works like this: The thief contacts the dealer by e-mail. They negotiate a price for one or more pieces of art. The buyer, who is often from some remote overseas location, sends the dealer a cashier?s check, money order or a credit card number...

More on Esplund on the Barnes

Posted on June 21, 2010
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Lance Esplund's long essay in The Weekly Standard about the Barnes move. The magazine now has a letter to the editor from Brett Miller, the general counsel of the Barnes, and a response from Esplund. You can read them both here...

"Does it matter whether works of art are really by the people or cultures that are supposed to have created them?"

Posted on June 18, 2010
Martin Gayford considers the question.

"An artist calling his or her dealer a 'jerk' or a 'moron' also would likely be protected speech in oral or written form"

Posted on June 17, 2010
At the Huffington Post, Daniel Grant on defamation and the art world.

Minor Trouble

Posted on June 13, 2010
The New York Times on Halsey Minor's financial troubles, including the following:"A lawsuit stemming from Mr. Minor?s failure to pay $13 million he owed Sotheby?s led to a $6.6 million judgment in the spring. Last week, the New York federal judge overseeing the case ordered him to surrender by mid-June a long list of his remaining assets...

"'The Art of the Steal' is not journalism but advocacy"

Posted on June 12, 2010
Reviews continue to trickle in:"[I]t?s hard to feel much outrage here. Compared with the massacre in Darfur or the Gulf oil spill, it?s hard to see who got hurt here. More people, and more scholars, will be able to see the Barnes paintings in a state-of-the-art, climate-controlled building...

"A legend in the world of art theft"

Posted on June 12, 2010
That's how the Art Market Monitor describes Robert Wittman, the retired head of the F.B.I.?s Art Crime Team, who has just published a memoir, "Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World?s Stolen Treasures." Here is coverage by Randy Kennedy in the New York Times...

"The details of the court battle are murky"

Posted on June 12, 2010
"But two-and-a-half years later, Havassy and the company reached a settlement."Background, from four-and-a-half years ago, here.

Infringement Suit

Posted on June 12, 2010
The Art Newspaper:"Photographer Anne Pearse-Hocker is suing Firelight Media in [Virginia] for $450,000 for copyright infringement, claiming that their 2008 documentary 'We Shall Remain: Wounded Knee' used photographs she took of the 1973 siege without her permission ...

Linkage

Posted on June 12, 2010
Charitable giving down 3.6% in 2009.FBI art theft program coming to New York."A story from Chicago that reminds us of the basic tenet that art theft is a crime of opportunity."Another one bites the dust.Are tattoo artists protected by the First Amendment?"Larry Salander's art goes bust at Christie's...

"Can we any longer avoid deaccessioning, if acquisition funds are now empty and museums have to fund acres of storage for third-rate pictures?"

Posted on June 12, 2010
Bendor Grosvenor in The Art Newspaper on the coming cuts to arts funding in the UK.

"You could not operate a museum at that location under [those] restrictions and [at] that size, and make it financially sustainable for the long run?

Posted on June 12, 2010
That's Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on the Barnes. More here:"[Rendell] denied the new facility will be a McDonald?s-style mega-museum insensitive to Dr. Barnes?s vision. 'The basic display is going to replicate as accurately as possible the way the art was displayed in Dr...

"His emphatic assertions of wrongdoing by Sotheby?s were just so much bluster"

Posted on June 11, 2010
Peter Friedman on "Halsey Minor's fall."

"The first work to go to the Meadows will be El Greco?s 'Pentecost'"

Posted on June 11, 2010
In today's New York Times, Carol Vogel reports on a new "three-year partnership" between the Prado Museum in Madrid and the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, which "will include the loan of major paintings ? one a year ? from the Prado...

Update on WWII Memorial Lawsuit

Posted on June 10, 2010
Last summer I mentioned a possible VARA suit involving a World War II memorial sculpture in Washington state. The Bellingham Herald has an update:"The memorial?s artist, Simon Kogan, twice has tried to secure restraining orders to stop maintenance or restoration work on the memorial as part of a lawsuit he filed against the Department of General Administration, which maintains the memorial...

"For a sniper?s-eye view of how volatile the market for a single work of art can be . . ."

Posted on June 08, 2010
". . . just consider the recent court decision requiring Christie's to pay Internet entrepreneur Halsey Minor $8.6 million after the auction house prevented him from selling four Richard Princes at the height of the art boom."

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.