"In May last year, Fayadh was sentenced to four years in prison and 800 lashes. But on 17 November, another judge in the court of Abha in southern Saudi Arabia ruled that Fayadh be executed for apostasy."

The Art Newspaper:  Art world rallies around artist sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.

"Masked bandits broke into one of Verona’s most important museums and stole 17 paintings."

Story here.

Freeport News

1.  Mostafa Heddaya:  Are freeports "a disaster waiting to happen?"  Well, they're storage facilities, so the same risks that apply to other storage facilities apply to them too.

2.  Artnet:  Swiss parliament approves stricter regulations for freeports and customs warehouses yesterday -- including a six month limit.

File under: judges don't like, and don't get, VARA

Nicholas O'Donnell spots a "muddled" VARA ruling out of California.  See his discussion here. You can read the decision here.

Motion to dismiss in the monkey selfie lawsuit

Slate's Jordan Weismann has it here.  He says "the gist of the motion ... is pretty simple: Under 9th Circuit precedent, animals ... only have standing to sue when Congress explicitly says they do. Copyright laws don't mention any right of action for monkeys. Therefore, this case is for the birds."  Prawfblawg's Howard Wasserman says "the motion argues both lack of standing and failure to state a claim, both based on the argument that copyright protections do not extend to non-human animals. As I argued in [a] prior post, I believe that under Lexmark the proper basis for dismissing is failure to state a claim."  More from the Washington Post here.  Background here.

Ulay v. Marina

Noah Charney has a good write-up in The Guardian.  It's a breach of contract claim ("With the encouragement of Abramović’s gallerist Sean Kelly, a contract was drawn up to manage their joint oeuvre"), and it's being heard in Amsterdam.

"Fukunaga's borrowing appears to be another episode of 'It's not stealing if I can afford the potential legal bills.'" (UPDATED)

"That's the kind of image appropriation that happens when bigger and more powerful members of the entertainment industry—like Fukunaga and Netflix—rationalize the pilfering of original ideas from their poorer fellow artists with little or no credit and zero remuneration."

Christian Viveros-Fauné on the strong similarities between the new movie Beasts of No Nation and the work of Irish artist Richard Mosse.

UPDATE:  Some thoughts from Brian Frye.

"Everyone lives in fear right now in the art market. No one will authenticate anything."

More on Richard Polsky's new Warhol authentication service.

Rent I Pay

Is the single-venue gallery on the road to extinction?  Judd Tully considers the question here.  Felix Salmon says the answer is no and the proof is in the state of the rental market in Chelsea.

"[I]n the face of lawsuits from disgruntled collectors ..., most foundations shuttered their authentication committees."

"However, ArtNews reports that well-known Warhol expert Richard Polsky has launched a new one-man Warhol authentication service. Only $2,500 per! While Polsky can probably avoid at least some of the conflict of interest allegations that hounded the Warhol Foundation's late Art Authentication Board, I anticipate other potential issues. For example, it seems that Polsky has a rather strong incentive to lean in favor of finding that works are authentic. Curiously, his authentication service only requires the submission of digital photos. Perhaps he plans to look at the actual works in question if he is uncertain? But then again, in the ArtNews interview, Polsky repeatedly claims a 'sixth sense' as to whether putative Warhol's are authentic. With great power comes great responsibility? I'm not sure I trust Polsky's spider-sense as much as he does."

Brian Frye on art forgery and its discontents.