BREAKING NEWS: Some art is held in storage (UPDATED)

The New York Times is on it.

Something must be done!

UPDATE:  The Art Market Monitor:  "Taken together, the stories betray a level of philistinism among the Times’s editorial staff that really ought to be examined by someone in charge."

Extradition Request in Knoedler Case Denied (UPDATED)

Glafira Rosales's boyfriend.  Health reasons.

UPDATE:  More here from Eileen Kinsella at artnet.

"You can’t copyright an idea." (UPDATED)

Lit pigeons edition.

UPDATE:  Once again, a dissenting view from Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento:  "This isn’t so much about copyright as it is about an Artist with a well-known art institution backing him up burying another artist for the exposure and the seemingly new 'idea.' Will the hypocrisy ever end?"

"What I found was an art world that is this closed, secretive world."

Barbara Pollack profiles Meridith Savona and the FBI's Art Crime Team.

60 Minutes did a thing on the Knoedler case this weekend

You can see it here.  Features appearances by friends of the blog (and Advanced Topics in Art Law guest speakers) Jack Flam, Greg Clarick, and Jamie Martin.

M.H. Miller has some thoughts here.  AFC points out the segment "reveals little," which is true.  I think the problem is it's impossible to explain what happened to a lay audience in a format like this. If you get it -- if you understand how implausible it was that there would just be this vast trove of undiscovered works by the giants of Abstract Expressionism -- you get it.  But if you don't see that, Anderson Cooper isn't going to convince you of it in 10 minutes.

"That magic trick illustrates the fundamental absurdity of treating contemporary art as an investment vehicle." (UPDATED 3X)

"In one simple statement, the creator took these 'assets'––ostensibly worth thousands of dollars each––and rendered them worthless to the market. So the next time you hear a silver-tongued broker explaining the wisdom of adding living artists' works to your portfolio, ask him how he'd feel about investing in Facebook if Mark Zuckerberg could suddenly 'de-authenticate' a few thousand shares any time Goldman Sachs pissed him off : )"

Tim Schneider on the Simchowitz-Mahama settlement.

UPDATE:  Brian Frye asks some good questions in the comments at Schneider's blog:  "I wonder about the metaphysics of 'de-authentication.' In other words, does it always work? And to what extent? If so, why does the market (i.e. investors) allow the artist to unilaterally determine the 'authenticity' of the work? Can you imagine a circumstance in which the market would ignore the artist's ipse dixit?"

Cady Noland is of course relevant here.

UPDATE 2:  And I should have linked to Amy Adler here:  "A recent lawsuit involving the artist Cady Noland illustrates the way in which a living artist’s disclaimer of a work, even when everyone knows it’s 'real,' can still transform it into a fake."

UPDATE 3:  A different view from Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento:  "Put simply, we don’t think this is more than another attempt by certain artist to bite the same hand that feeds them, and that feeds them well. In other words, it’s marketing ploy with little teeth, because unless your head is still stuck in the sand you’ve come to understand that it’s the collector and the art market that dictate what is a work of 'art.'"

So This Is Chrismas

"The outlook for Douglas Chrismas, the founder of one of Los Angeles’s oldest and largest galleries, seems to be growing bleaker by the day.  Sam Leslie, the forensic accountant who now runs the day-to-day operations of the gallery, has officially terminated Chrismas’s role with Ace Gallery and has filed a lengthy status report to the court, documenting millions of dollars diverted to mysterious accounts and dozens of works of art that have been moved to private storage."

"Prosecutors allege that Zukerman engaged in a complex scheme to avoid paying New York State sales and use taxes on the purchase of those paintings."

Sales tax crackdown continues.

"A settlement was reached in a skirmish over ownership of Pablo Picasso’s plaster 'Bust of a Woman,' according to a filing in New York federal court."

Breaking news.  Background here.

Tell me again about the public trust (Warhol Museum edition)

"The museum traded deaccessioned works from its collection for the painting."

"Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and the Case of the Missing Flag"

By Greg Allen.

"NYS is currently focusing on the use of resale certificates (which exempt a purchase from sales tax) in connection with art purchases."

Diana Wierbicki and Seth Cohen:  How Art Collectors Can Stay Out Of Tax Trouble In New York.

Simchowitz Settlement

Story here.  Background here.

Tell me again about the public trust (somehow, the museum has made peace with parting with more than 600 pieces of Chinese ceramics edition) (UPDATED)

The Met is selling them at Christie's.  They have 3,600 other Chinese ceramics, so it's not like selling off 15% of them is that big of a deal.  And it's not like "the essential point of museum collections" is that "once an object falls under the aegis of a museum, it is held in the public trust, to be accessible to present and future generations."  Oh, it is?

UPDATE:  Daniel Grant emails a very good point:

"What struck me as odd is that the Met is defending its decision to sell (perhaps awaiting criticism of its move)...

"'About 60 percent of the things we’re deaccessioning came in 1879, so there wasn’t that much scholarship, there wasn’t that much discrimination,' Mr. Hearn. 'They’ve really been extensively reviewed; most have never been exhibited or published.'"

"...while disparaging these items in advance of a sale, which probably won't bolster the prices. I think the Met should pick one direction and stick with it."

"By digitizing and replicating objects of cultural heritage, we risk inviting a host of legal disputes over access and ownership."

An interesting piece in the Boston Globe a few days ago by Sonia Katyal and Simone Ross, on (among other things) 3D printing, art, and copyright.

"We are committed to rooting out tax abuses wherever we find them, especially in the art world, where the difference can be hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars in lost tax revenue" (UPDATED)

NYT:  Developer Aby Rosen to Pay $7 Million in Suit Over Unpaid Taxes on Art.

UPDATE:  Tim Schneider thinks Rosen got a raw deal:  "[W]hile some dealers certainly view tax laws as made to be broken, I actually side with Rosen and Gelfand here, at least based on what's been reported. Given that transactions in the art industry can happen anywhere at any time, hanging works at home hardly means they're not actively on the market."