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Penn Portraits

By Intellectual Property Law, Esq.

An interesting bit of information from Randy Kennedy's story in today's New York Times about the Getty's acquisition of Irving Penn's entire "Small Trades" series, 252 portraits of blue-collar workers ? "waiters, bakers, butchers, rag-and-bone men":

"Weston Naef, the Getty?s senior photography curator, said that the museum had been working to acquire the series for more than five years, but the sticking point had been copyright ownership of the images. In many cases, he said, Mr. Penn and Condé Nast ... share the copyrights to Mr. Penn?s images. And the Getty, which had long insisted that it be given copyright power over the trade series, along with the master set of the photographs, decided in the end to abandon the copyright demand."

The sale was negotiated by Pace/MacGill. No word on the price.

Full post as published by The Art Law Blog on February 07, 2008 (boomark / email).