"That I would be able to ever pronounce these words is something I had no longer dared to hope for." (UPDATED)

NYT:  2 van Gogh Paintings Stolen From Amsterdam Are Recovered in Italy.

UPDATE:  Jonathan Jones:  Gangsters' use of paintings as currency shows a profound belief in art.

Met lays off 34 employees (UPDATED)

Story here.

UPDATE:  There's also this:  "The museum also expects to reduce the number of annual exhibitions over the next few years, perhaps to 40 from 55."  That's fine; just remember it's a choice.

Michael Rushton on whether museums should provide free admission

Self-recommending (even without the interesting detour into deaccessioning).

"Are museums for sale?"

A big thank you to the Art, Cultural Institutions and Heritage Law Committee of the International Bar Association for including me as a panelist in yesterday's session:  Are museums for sale? The role of the private collector and corporate sponsor.  (I was on Panel 1 -- "Will de-accessioning be the new normal?"  To which my basic response was/is:  isn't it already the new normal?  Haven't we been told it shouldn't be such a touchy subject?)

"[Negishi] has intervened in some areas of my paintings, but the intellectual authorship of the works is mine."

Via Clancco, news of a co-authorship claim in Spain by a former studio assistant of the artist Antonio de Felipe.  I don't know what the story is in Spain, but the problem with this sort of claim under U.S. law is that co-authorship requires that the parties intended to be recognized as co-authors, and that's obviously not the case in most artist-studio assistant situations.

Getty Images moves to dismiss Highsmith lawsuit

Story here.  Background here.

"Of course, I’m pleased by the verdict. But it was a horrible thing to go through.”

Peter Doig talks to The Globe and Mail about his recent trial:  "It took up so much time and energy not to mention, of course, money."

He believes the "larger take-away" from the case is that "a living artist should be the first and last authenticator."

But what about the possibility that an artist might be mistaken, or dishonest?

"'Sometimes, of course, there may be an agenda' – a disputatious ex-lover, 'someone the artist had bad dealings with – and they may say, "I didn’t make that work." But that is so, so rare, I think.' Most people, Doig said, would 'just take it on the chin and say, "Yeah, I did do it."'"

Marie Dooley says the case "demonstrates that authentication, even by the living artist himself, can prove to be a costly endeavor for all parties involved."  Exactly.

"Art collector ... Michael Shvo has been indicted by the Manhattan District Attorney for tax evasion related to a scheme to avoid sales tax on expensive art purchases." (UPDATED)

Story here.

UPDATE:  More details on the alleged scheme here.  And here:

"The DA said that between 2010 and 2016, Shvo falsely told auction houses that purchases he made would be shipped to an out-of-state address in the Cayman Islands or other foreign countries, thus avoiding sales tax. Instead, they went to his offices and homes in New York state.... Two moving companies, Hedley’s Inc and Bestguy Moving, are also charged with participating in the scheme.They allegedly provided the auction houses and galleries with improper shipping documentation to conceal the delivery destinations. Shvo is even alleged to have fraudulently used New York Resale Certificates, which allow art dealers to purchase items exclusively for resale without paying tax."

"Sentences handed down in high-profile case over Drouot thefts"

The Art Newspaper:  "[T]he Paris Criminal Court convicted 38 of 49 defendants in a high-profile trial that opened in March over a complicated web of thefts within the [UCHV], the former art handlers’ union of the Hôtel Drouot in Paris. The group ... held a monopoly on art handling at the auction house from 1860 until 2010."  Background here.

"If a living artist has to endure years of expensive litigation and a full-blown trial to defend their position on whether they authored a work of art, what hope do experts, who are usually brought in to opine on authorship once an artist has passed away and can no longer vouch for their work, have?"

"On the other hand, it’s also not unheard of for an artist to try and disavow a work that they created for reasons of personal animus or because they no longer wish to be associated with the work."

"We might be sympathetic to a plaintiff in the case of a different set of facts."

So said Amy Adler in response to the recent Peter Doig case.

Hazel Rowland collects some examples of different sets of facts here.

Are we sympathetic?

"It is impossible to talk about the case without making it sound ridiculous; indeed, it *is* ridiculous, as in 'an exceptionally easy target for ridicule.'"

America’s only known primatologist-turned-copyright-law-professor weighs in on the monkey selfie case:

"There are many reasons that copyright law does not and should not deem Naruto to be an 'author,' ranging from the purely practical (e.g., How do we know the monkey’s name is 'Naruto,' and that he was the one that snapped the photo? What if no human had been there to see him do so — is there still a copyright, and does he own it? Insofar as copyright in a work endures for the life of the author plus 70 years, who’s keeping track of this wild macaque’s lifespan, and how will we know when it’s over?) to the more abstract: Copyright’s fundamental rationale is that bestowing protection on works is a means of providing 'authors' with an incentive that they otherwise would not have to create those works in the first place; non-humans (and machines, for that matter) can’t be 'authors' because they won’t be and can’t be incentivized by the existence of copyright protection for their works."

California bans painting depicting Confederate flag from County Fair art show

The Center for Individual Rights objects.  So does the LA Times editorial board.