The controversial Albright-Knox deaccessioning continued today, with some result:
"An important, 2,000-year-old Roman bronze of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, brought $28.6 million this afternoon at Sotheby's in New York, becoming both the most expensive antiquity and piece of sculpture from any period to sell at auction.
...
"Albright-Knox has offered 207 artworks and objects to be sold in a series of auctions at Sotheby's this spring. Today's sale brings the Albright-Knox total to $72.8 million. ...
"The Albright-Knox lots at today's auction, which all sold, tallied $40.6 million, far exceeding their $9.3 million high estimate. ... Dealers said that pristine ownership history made the Albright-Knox works even more desirable, especially at a time when the antiquities field has been mired in legal battles over artworks with murky histories."
Said Tom Freudenheim, who led the unsuccessful campaign to block the sales (see here): "Good for the museum that they are going to end up with a zillion dollars to spend on overpriced art.''
More from the Buffalo News here.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Settlement in the Brooklyn College Lawsuit (UPDATED)
Tomorrow's New York Sun will have this report:
"The city yesterday [promised] to pay $750 to each of the 18 art students and a professor who had participated in an exhibit the city closed last year at the Brooklyn War Memorial ... The payments and an apology settle a First Amendment lawsuit brought by the students, charging city officials with censorship. The exhibit, put on by master's degree candidates at Brooklyn College, included a sculpture of a penis and a separate piece containing a written narrative describing a sexual encounter with a man named Dick Cheney. One day after the display opened in May 2006, the Brooklyn parks commissioner ... locked the doors to the War Memorial, which Brooklyn College students had used as an exhibit space."
The Sun's lede is that the city "backed down," though a less than $15,000 settlement doesn't strike me as much of a capitulation. (On the other hand, there may be something to the students' lawyer's point that the apology might serve to "create a government consciousness not to do this again.") The article also sees the resolution as evidence that "the Bloomberg administration is pursuing a more conciliatory path when accused of censorship than had the [Giuliani] administration," but, as noted in this post from last year, Mayor Bloomberg strongly defended the city's actions at the time: "Nobody's suggesting that anybody shouldn't be allowed to exhibit art. The issue here is this is not a museum. This is a war memorial. There has been an understanding ever since art was put here that the art would be appropriate for families and respectful of and appropriate for a war memorial and this time it was not."
UPDATE: The New York Times has a brief piece this morning. One thing I missed last night is that the city also agreed to pay $42,500 in legal fees to the students' lawyers, so, at $57,000, the settlement starts to look a little more capitulatory. There's also an editorial in today's Sun which begins: "It's hard to recall a more abject show of weakness in city government in recent years than the decision of the Bloomberg administration to apologize for closing an 'art' exhibit of pornographicalistic political commentary against our wartime leaders that Brooklyn College students had mounted inside the city's war memorial in Cadman Plaza park."
"The city yesterday [promised] to pay $750 to each of the 18 art students and a professor who had participated in an exhibit the city closed last year at the Brooklyn War Memorial ... The payments and an apology settle a First Amendment lawsuit brought by the students, charging city officials with censorship. The exhibit, put on by master's degree candidates at Brooklyn College, included a sculpture of a penis and a separate piece containing a written narrative describing a sexual encounter with a man named Dick Cheney. One day after the display opened in May 2006, the Brooklyn parks commissioner ... locked the doors to the War Memorial, which Brooklyn College students had used as an exhibit space."
The Sun's lede is that the city "backed down," though a less than $15,000 settlement doesn't strike me as much of a capitulation. (On the other hand, there may be something to the students' lawyer's point that the apology might serve to "create a government consciousness not to do this again.") The article also sees the resolution as evidence that "the Bloomberg administration is pursuing a more conciliatory path when accused of censorship than had the [Giuliani] administration," but, as noted in this post from last year, Mayor Bloomberg strongly defended the city's actions at the time: "Nobody's suggesting that anybody shouldn't be allowed to exhibit art. The issue here is this is not a museum. This is a war memorial. There has been an understanding ever since art was put here that the art would be appropriate for families and respectful of and appropriate for a war memorial and this time it was not."
UPDATE: The New York Times has a brief piece this morning. One thing I missed last night is that the city also agreed to pay $42,500 in legal fees to the students' lawyers, so, at $57,000, the settlement starts to look a little more capitulatory. There's also an editorial in today's Sun which begins: "It's hard to recall a more abject show of weakness in city government in recent years than the decision of the Bloomberg administration to apologize for closing an 'art' exhibit of pornographicalistic political commentary against our wartime leaders that Brooklyn College students had mounted inside the city's war memorial in Cadman Plaza park."
"21st century I.P. madness"
Tim Cavanaugh, web editor of The Los Angeles Times' editorial page, had an opinion piece yesterday on Carol Shloss's lawsuit against the Joyce estate (which I posted about, most recently, here). He says the case "sheds light on an ironic, and maybe inevitable, trend in intellectual property: As copyright becomes harder to defend, many copyright holders are becoming less realistic about the limitations of their ownership."
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Lost
An interesting Second Circuit decision last week involving the valuation of lost photographs. Photojournalist Arthur Grace's licensing agent, Sygma, lost more than 40,000 of his images. The question in the case was how to value the loss. The District Court decision, by Judge Chin, after rejecting "the industry's liquidated damages standard of $1,500 per lost transparency" because it would have led to the "absurd result" of a $60 million verdict, awarded Grace a total $472,000, composed primarily of $100 per image for 4,000 images (what Chin called "selects") and $1 an image for the other 36,000. The Second Circuit wasn't pleased with that methodology and so vacated the award and remanded for a new assessment of damages, "suggest[ing]" a methodology that focuses more on the present value of the future lost earnings from the missing photos. The decision is here. David Walker points out that the digital revolution may mean that this decision will end up being of largely historical interest.
"Hey Louie, I know where your painting is. Get a lawyer"
Long (and I mean long) story in the Hartford Courant this weekend about a painting bought for $3 at a tag sale that turned out, 30 years later, to be a John Singer Sargent worth more than $6 million. Mental illness, lawsuits, use of the word "stugots," it's all there. The Cliff Notes version is here. You can see the painting here.
ARIS Again
Yet another article on ARIS Corp. and its efforts to market title insurance for art -- this one in the Wall Street Journal Online -- even though they still haven't written a single policy ("though some major candidates are pending"!). Previous appearances by ARIS here, here, and here. For the reasons described here, I remain skeptical.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Graffiti Art Copyright Dispute
The New York Times today reports on a dispute between a number of graffiti artists and a photographer who put out a book that depicted their work without permission. The publisher of the book, University Press of Mississippi, has removed the book from its catalog.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Shloss Wins (Again)
Back in April, I mentioned that, after settling her lawsuit against the James Joyce Estate, Stanford Professor Carol Shloss had moved for an order requiring the Estate to pay her attorneys' fees. Today that motion was granted. The amount of the fees hasn't yet been set, but Anthony Falzone of Stanford's Fair Use Project, which represents Shloss in the lawsuit, says "we hope this demonstrates that inadequate respect for fair use's critical role in scholarly inquiry and free expression can have substantial and serious consequences." You can read the court's order here.
More Splasher
A lengthy piece in New York magazine this week about the Splasher, mentioned earlier here. Here's the set-up:
"Here at the beginning, then, why don’t we just lay out the mystery, the so-called facts, as plain as we can make them. In the fall, some anonymous figure started vandalizing the city’s most celebrated vandalism—by which I mean not traditional seventies-style spray-paint graffiti but a relatively new, gentrified outgrowth of that tradition that’s come to be called 'street art': multimedia works of astonishing polish and complexity and beauty, often created by artists without a 'street' bone in their bodies. Many went to art school and have grown-up jobs and lucrative gallery careers and are terrified of the cops and traditional graffiti crews. Over the past ten years, as street art has become big business—upscale art shows in London and Tokyo, advertising contracts, waves of positive media coverage, blogfuls of groupies—it’s generated exactly the kind of internal backlash you’d expect in a subculture conceived of as guerrilla warfare against consumer culture. The Splasher epitomizes this backlash. In the middle of the night, about six months ago, this vandalism vandal started hitting the scene’s most acclaimed masterpieces, works that might have gone for $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 in a gallery, with big sloppy splashes of housepaint—teal, white, purple, yellow, electric blue. Beneath the splash he—or she, or they, or (who knows?) us—would leave a manifesto ranting, in Marxist jargon, about commodification and fetishization and the author’s intention of 'euthanizing your bourgeois fad.' From November to March, the splashes arrived in bursts, busy weeks interspersed with long fallow periods. By the end of the campaign, observers counted nearly a hundred of them."
The story does note the "blinding irony" that "no matter how artful the best street art inarguably is, it’s still illegal—so the Splasher was only vandalizing vandalism." You can see some examples of the Splasher's work alongside the article.
"Here at the beginning, then, why don’t we just lay out the mystery, the so-called facts, as plain as we can make them. In the fall, some anonymous figure started vandalizing the city’s most celebrated vandalism—by which I mean not traditional seventies-style spray-paint graffiti but a relatively new, gentrified outgrowth of that tradition that’s come to be called 'street art': multimedia works of astonishing polish and complexity and beauty, often created by artists without a 'street' bone in their bodies. Many went to art school and have grown-up jobs and lucrative gallery careers and are terrified of the cops and traditional graffiti crews. Over the past ten years, as street art has become big business—upscale art shows in London and Tokyo, advertising contracts, waves of positive media coverage, blogfuls of groupies—it’s generated exactly the kind of internal backlash you’d expect in a subculture conceived of as guerrilla warfare against consumer culture. The Splasher epitomizes this backlash. In the middle of the night, about six months ago, this vandalism vandal started hitting the scene’s most acclaimed masterpieces, works that might have gone for $10,000 or $20,000 or $30,000 in a gallery, with big sloppy splashes of housepaint—teal, white, purple, yellow, electric blue. Beneath the splash he—or she, or they, or (who knows?) us—would leave a manifesto ranting, in Marxist jargon, about commodification and fetishization and the author’s intention of 'euthanizing your bourgeois fad.' From November to March, the splashes arrived in bursts, busy weeks interspersed with long fallow periods. By the end of the campaign, observers counted nearly a hundred of them."
The story does note the "blinding irony" that "no matter how artful the best street art inarguably is, it’s still illegal—so the Splasher was only vandalizing vandalism." You can see some examples of the Splasher's work alongside the article.
Varian on Orphan Works
Hal Varian has a piece in today's New York Times on the issue of orphan works, discussed earlier here. It begins:
"Here’s a quiz question for authors: To copyright a written work in the United States, you must (a) register it with the Copyright Office; (b) insert a notice that says 'Copyright © 2007'; (c) insert a notice that says 'All rights reserved.' Answer: none of the above. Under current law, a work is automatically copyrighted the moment it is 'fixed in tangible form.'"
He goes on to point out that "since there is no requirement to register a work ..., the legal owner of a work can be difficult to find, particularly when the work is more than a few decades old," and summarizes the current proposed legislation to address the issue:
"Under [the proposed legislation], if you conducted a 'diligent search' to locate a rights holder and still failed to find the owner, you would be off the hook. You could then incorporate the work in question into your own work, as long as you provided proper attribution. If the legitimate rights holder was subsequently found, he or she could not require that your work be withdrawn from circulation, but could collect 'reasonable compensation' for use."
He notes that the proposal is "still on the back burner in Congress," but says it is "certainly a step in the right direction" and "hope[s] that it soon gets the attention it deserves." He also mentions an alternative proposal being pushed by Stanford lawprof Larry Lessig, "a system where authors receive an automatic copyright when they create new works, but they must register their copyright within 14 years to retain it past the initial period."
"Here’s a quiz question for authors: To copyright a written work in the United States, you must (a) register it with the Copyright Office; (b) insert a notice that says 'Copyright © 2007'; (c) insert a notice that says 'All rights reserved.' Answer: none of the above. Under current law, a work is automatically copyrighted the moment it is 'fixed in tangible form.'"
He goes on to point out that "since there is no requirement to register a work ..., the legal owner of a work can be difficult to find, particularly when the work is more than a few decades old," and summarizes the current proposed legislation to address the issue:
"Under [the proposed legislation], if you conducted a 'diligent search' to locate a rights holder and still failed to find the owner, you would be off the hook. You could then incorporate the work in question into your own work, as long as you provided proper attribution. If the legitimate rights holder was subsequently found, he or she could not require that your work be withdrawn from circulation, but could collect 'reasonable compensation' for use."
He notes that the proposal is "still on the back burner in Congress," but says it is "certainly a step in the right direction" and "hope[s] that it soon gets the attention it deserves." He also mentions an alternative proposal being pushed by Stanford lawprof Larry Lessig, "a system where authors receive an automatic copyright when they create new works, but they must register their copyright within 14 years to retain it past the initial period."
Uphill Climb
Lee Rosenbaum reports that the Montgomery County Commissioners have hired a lawyer, Mark Schwartz of Bryn Mawr, to try a last ditch effort to stop the Barnes from moving to Philadelphia. (This is the result of the "SOS" resolution I mentioned here.) As Lee says, Schwartz "faces a formidable challenge: A court case has already been decided, allowing the move, and Philadelphia's movers and shakers are solidly behind it."
To sell or not to sell?
The Chicago Tribune takes a tour through all the recent deaccessioning battles, including of course Thomas Jefferson University's Eakins sale and the Albright-Knox's ongoing series of auction sales. It also sheds a bit of light on the Fisk University-O'Keeffe dispute. I've wondered in the past just what the Tennessee AG is seeking to accomplish there: "Is it that the works not be sold at all, which would presumably make the 'radical conservatives' happy? Or is it that they be sold for a price higher than the one Fisk originally agreed to (on the basis of an appraisal that was two years old at the time), which would presumably make Yale's Jock Reynolds happy but might also result in the O'Keeffe painting not going to the publicly accessible O'Keeffe museum but rather to some private collection somewhere?" Well, the answer now seems to be the former: "My goal is, hopefully, to keep this collection intact. This is a collection that I think any university, any city, would be proud to have as part of its cultural offering." That, of course, is precisely the position the O'Keeffe Museum was taking in the lawsuit -- at least until it agreed to the settlement by which it would acquire the O'Keeffe painting Fisk wanted to sell, at a bargain basement price, in exchange for dropping its objection to the university putting another painting from the collection, "Painting No. 3" by Marsden Hartley, on the open market. Now, the AG initially approved that settlement, so the question I still have is what happened afterward that convinced him the collection should be kept intact, even if it means Fisk is stuck with the kind of financial troubles that led it to want to sell the two works in the first place? Was the collection not worth keeping intact if the price the museum was paying for it under the settlement was near its current fair market value? Did the fact that the museum was getting a very healthy discount somehow awaken the AG to the notion that any university would be proud to have the Stieglitz collection as part of its cultural offering?
And here's a related story about another way Fisk might be able to solve its financial woes:
"Financially troubled Fisk University, plagued for years by weak and inconsistent fund raising, has recruited a seasoned institutional specialist to help reverse its fortunes and help it try to catch up in the all important fund-raising game. Dr. Sulayman Clark, who quietly joined the Fisk staff in early April as vice president for institutional development, got his start in fund raising in the mid-1980s as a special assistant to the president of Hampton University. He has since helped other schools craft ambitious ideas and raise millions of dollars for their endowments as a member of the executive teams at Morehouse College, Tuskegee University and, most recently, North Carolina Central University."
And here's a related story about another way Fisk might be able to solve its financial woes:
"Financially troubled Fisk University, plagued for years by weak and inconsistent fund raising, has recruited a seasoned institutional specialist to help reverse its fortunes and help it try to catch up in the all important fund-raising game. Dr. Sulayman Clark, who quietly joined the Fisk staff in early April as vice president for institutional development, got his start in fund raising in the mid-1980s as a special assistant to the president of Hampton University. He has since helped other schools craft ambitious ideas and raise millions of dollars for their endowments as a member of the executive teams at Morehouse College, Tuskegee University and, most recently, North Carolina Central University."
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
For Sale
The New York Post reports that Brant Publications -- which includes Interview magazine, The Magazine Antiques, and Art in America -- is up for sale. According to the Post, the company "recently retained Allen & Co. to 'explore strategic alternatives,' sources say, which is the publishing industry's lingo that investment bankers use when they put a media property up for sale to the highest bidder."
Lee Rosenbaum, who's a contributing editor at Art in America, has some inside scoop.
Lee Rosenbaum, who's a contributing editor at Art in America, has some inside scoop.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
"The list included one item that Mr. Thompson described as a final straw"
Here's Mass MoCA's Joe Thompson in The New York Times earlier this week:
"Mr. Büchel has not worked on the show since early last December, when he returned to Europe to attend to other projects and left behind a list of additional objects that he wanted the museum to find. The list included one item that Mr. Thompson described as a final straw: the fuselage from a large jetliner, like a 767, that Mr. Büchel wanted to be burned and bomb-damaged and then hung from the ceiling. 'That's when I began to put on the brakes on the project,' Mr. Thompson said in a recent interview at the museum ….'"
This has become part of the standard narrative of the dispute. See, e.g., Time's Richard Lacayo ("Joseph Thompson, the MASS MoCA director, says he finally called it quits when Buchel went back to Europe last December and left behind a list of new elements he needed for the installation, including the fuselage of a large jet liner ....").
But here's Joe Thompson in September 2006, in an email to Christoph:
From: Joe Thompson
Date: 16. September 2006 00:13:53 GMT+01:00
Subject: Big thoughts, key information
CB –
(...)
Only big things we haven’t really nailed down yet are the house, and the big airplane fuselage. Nato is hauling a ton of useful junk in every day, and Richard has found great bar stools, and related materials. Going pretty well on that front, and we’re just getting started.
(...)
I’m terrified about the costs, by the way. So far, we have zero in sponsorships, nada,…if you have any ideas for that, let me know, as I really have to get to work on that right away.
Joe
"Final straw," huh?
"Mr. Büchel has not worked on the show since early last December, when he returned to Europe to attend to other projects and left behind a list of additional objects that he wanted the museum to find. The list included one item that Mr. Thompson described as a final straw: the fuselage from a large jetliner, like a 767, that Mr. Büchel wanted to be burned and bomb-damaged and then hung from the ceiling. 'That's when I began to put on the brakes on the project,' Mr. Thompson said in a recent interview at the museum ….'"
This has become part of the standard narrative of the dispute. See, e.g., Time's Richard Lacayo ("Joseph Thompson, the MASS MoCA director, says he finally called it quits when Buchel went back to Europe last December and left behind a list of new elements he needed for the installation, including the fuselage of a large jet liner ....").
But here's Joe Thompson in September 2006, in an email to Christoph:
From: Joe Thompson
Date: 16. September 2006 00:13:53 GMT+01:00
Subject: Big thoughts, key information
CB –
(...)
Only big things we haven’t really nailed down yet are the house, and the big airplane fuselage. Nato is hauling a ton of useful junk in every day, and Richard has found great bar stools, and related materials. Going pretty well on that front, and we’re just getting started.
(...)
I’m terrified about the costs, by the way. So far, we have zero in sponsorships, nada,…if you have any ideas for that, let me know, as I really have to get to work on that right away.
Joe
"Final straw," huh?
Friday, May 25, 2007
Sotheby's Victory
Josh Baer: "Sotheby’s won a summary judgment in New York against Isabel Goldsmith (daughter of James Goldsmith and granddaughter of Antenor Patino) in a suit about works removed in the 1990’s from storage in London. The court ruled the British statute of limitations had expired for her over a work sold in NYC in 2001."
You can get the whole story here, from the UK's Daily Mail, which reports that Goldsmith is appealing the decision.
You can get the whole story here, from the UK's Daily Mail, which reports that Goldsmith is appealing the decision.
Picasso Lawsuit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution had an article this week on a local dealer who is facing a $5 million lawsuit (and, apparently, some attention from the FBI) over a Picasso drawing the authenticity of which was rejected by the artist's daughter. It's a long story that all goes to "demonstrate how easy it is to be duped in the art world when contact is not face to face and how readily a dealer in need of money will pursue a proposition." The dealer says he's working on a memoir "about the high end of the art world, where people make statements and they have nothing to base them on."
The Next Front in the Deaccession Wars?
Carol Vogel's New York Times column today discusses the case of Virginia's Randolph-Macon Woman's College, which, "short on funds and fearful of losing its accreditation," is considering selling part of its "world-class collection of American art," valued at more than $100 million. Alice Walton makes the obligatory appearance. Lee Rosenbaum (who was on this story a couple of weeks ago) calls for the Virgina Attorney General to get involved.
In unrelated deaccessioning news, Wendy Moonan's antiques column in today's Times includes the following:
"The star lot of Sotheby’s June 7 antiquities sale is an ancient bronze figure of the goddess Artemis. The auction house’s antiquities specialist, Richard M. Keresey, calls it 'the best single piece I’ve seen here in 37 years.' The 36-inch-tall sculpture, which the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo is de-accessioning, is ... estimated to sell for $5 million to $7 million, more than double the highest previous estimate for an antiquity at Sotheby’s ...."
In unrelated deaccessioning news, Wendy Moonan's antiques column in today's Times includes the following:
"The star lot of Sotheby’s June 7 antiquities sale is an ancient bronze figure of the goddess Artemis. The auction house’s antiquities specialist, Richard M. Keresey, calls it 'the best single piece I’ve seen here in 37 years.' The 36-inch-tall sculpture, which the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo is de-accessioning, is ... estimated to sell for $5 million to $7 million, more than double the highest previous estimate for an antiquity at Sotheby’s ...."
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Mass MoCA's Lawsuit
The following is from a letter I sent today to Mass MoCA's lawyers regarding the lawsuit they have filed against my client Christoph Büchel. There are a bunch of factual inaccuracies floating around out there, which we will address, but, for now, the essential point to understand is that the Visual Artists Rights Act is there to prevent the exhibition of works of art that have been distorted or modified -- and the museum is doing exactly that six ways to Sunday here. No amount of "tarp" can cover that up.
Here's the text of the letter:
With respect to the proposed exhibition Made at MASS MoCA, your client should be aware that:
1. It is not possible to "shield" the work "from view" in the way that has been proposed. As Mr. Thompson well knows, the work is not merely a visual but also a physical experience; the design of the space itself, and the ways that the visitor is moved through it, are as much a part of the meaning of the artwork as the objects within it. To take just one example, to enter the gallery one must pass through the cinema that is an essential part of the work. There is no way to "cover" that up; the visitor experiences the work by moving through it, and being "inside" of it. Accordingly, the museum's plan to allow visitor access to the work while "shielding the huge objects from view" will result in nothing other than the exhibition of a drastically distorted and modified version of the work, in willful violation of VARA as well as the parties' clear understanding. It is also clear, based on the photos that ran in The New York Times and The North Adams Transcript on Tuesday (the latter expressly admitting that "the single-family house taken from Houghton Street in North Adams for artist Christoph Büchel's unfinished exhibit can be seen peeking above a tarped-off aisle"), that the effort to "shield" "the objects" from view is incomplete at best, so that, even if one were to think of the work in purely visual terms, the result of the museum's actions is the display of a highly distorted version of what was intended as an integrated work – a version in which some of the objects that make up the work can be seen by the viewer and others cannot, utterly destroying the work's meaning and integrity. If the museum follows through on this plan, rest assured that we will seek all available remedies, including for all past violations (on which see the May 23 "Exhibitionist" blog post by the Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers wondering "who hasn't" already seen the show).
2. In any event, it is not the case that what the museum is seeking permission to show is "Mr. Büchel's" unfinished work. Instead, numerous elements have been assembled without his involvement or approval, as a kind of guess as to how he would have done so. (So it's more like a painter leaving a canvas less than half finished -- and it is absolutely false, by the way, that the work is 90% completed -- and a museum picking up a brush and filling in the rest and then having the audacity to present the painting as a "work in progress" by the artist.) The lawsuit you have filed is essentially a request for permission to show a distorted, modified work to the public.
3. The act of "covering" objects from the work (again sometimes only partially) is itself an intentional distortion and/or modification, once more in violation of the law as well as the parties' understanding.
4. As the copyright holder, Mr. Büchel denies permission for the use of any installation photographs in the exhibition.
Here's the text of the letter:
With respect to the proposed exhibition Made at MASS MoCA, your client should be aware that:
1. It is not possible to "shield" the work "from view" in the way that has been proposed. As Mr. Thompson well knows, the work is not merely a visual but also a physical experience; the design of the space itself, and the ways that the visitor is moved through it, are as much a part of the meaning of the artwork as the objects within it. To take just one example, to enter the gallery one must pass through the cinema that is an essential part of the work. There is no way to "cover" that up; the visitor experiences the work by moving through it, and being "inside" of it. Accordingly, the museum's plan to allow visitor access to the work while "shielding the huge objects from view" will result in nothing other than the exhibition of a drastically distorted and modified version of the work, in willful violation of VARA as well as the parties' clear understanding. It is also clear, based on the photos that ran in The New York Times and The North Adams Transcript on Tuesday (the latter expressly admitting that "the single-family house taken from Houghton Street in North Adams for artist Christoph Büchel's unfinished exhibit can be seen peeking above a tarped-off aisle"), that the effort to "shield" "the objects" from view is incomplete at best, so that, even if one were to think of the work in purely visual terms, the result of the museum's actions is the display of a highly distorted version of what was intended as an integrated work – a version in which some of the objects that make up the work can be seen by the viewer and others cannot, utterly destroying the work's meaning and integrity. If the museum follows through on this plan, rest assured that we will seek all available remedies, including for all past violations (on which see the May 23 "Exhibitionist" blog post by the Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers wondering "who hasn't" already seen the show).
2. In any event, it is not the case that what the museum is seeking permission to show is "Mr. Büchel's" unfinished work. Instead, numerous elements have been assembled without his involvement or approval, as a kind of guess as to how he would have done so. (So it's more like a painter leaving a canvas less than half finished -- and it is absolutely false, by the way, that the work is 90% completed -- and a museum picking up a brush and filling in the rest and then having the audacity to present the painting as a "work in progress" by the artist.) The lawsuit you have filed is essentially a request for permission to show a distorted, modified work to the public.
3. The act of "covering" objects from the work (again sometimes only partially) is itself an intentional distortion and/or modification, once more in violation of the law as well as the parties' understanding.
4. As the copyright holder, Mr. Büchel denies permission for the use of any installation photographs in the exhibition.
Follow up on the Sotheby's building dispute
Last week I mentioned a dispute between Sotheby's and its landlord. I said it was a little hard to parse what was going on from the press reports. A colleague with knowledge of the dispute comes to the rescue:
"Sothebys has a right of first refusal on any sale by the owner (Aby Rosen). A couple of years ago Rosen sold a large equity stake in the project to a third party. The documents are poorly drafted and are ambiguous as to whether the right of first refusal applies to a sale of less than 100% of the equity interests in the entity that owns the building. That's what the dispute is about."
"Sothebys has a right of first refusal on any sale by the owner (Aby Rosen). A couple of years ago Rosen sold a large equity stake in the project to a third party. The documents are poorly drafted and are ambiguous as to whether the right of first refusal applies to a sale of less than 100% of the equity interests in the entity that owns the building. That's what the dispute is about."
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Watch out for the average-looking ones
The Chicago Tribune reports on an "average-looking couple" -- "the Midwestern type" -- who stole a $60,000 Rembrandt etching from a Chicago gallery on Sunday. The work, called "Adam and Eve," was taken from a "preview room" next to the receptionist's desk. The owner of the gallery says the piece was insured, "but not for its asking price."
Smithsonian Copyright Challenge
The AP reports on an interesting copyright dispute involving the Smithsonian Institution. The nonprofit Public.Resource.Org thinks the copyright language on the Smithsonian Images web site (e.g., "even in the absence of copyright, Smithsonian still reserves all rights to image use") is too restrictive and, in response, has apparently downloaded all 6,288 images from the site and posted them for all to use for free on flickr.com.
Lawprof Deven Desai says "the issue is whether the holder of the physical thing (here a picture) can impose extra limits on the use of that thing." He says "the question becomes complicated rather fast," but suggests that "there may be a distinction between a public entity (which ... the Smithsonian is) and a private entity’s ability to use contract in this way."
Cornell's Peter Hirtle wishes the Smithsonian didn't try to assert control over its images, but says "everything I have read suggests that what the Smithsonian tried to do is legal."
Lawprof Deven Desai says "the issue is whether the holder of the physical thing (here a picture) can impose extra limits on the use of that thing." He says "the question becomes complicated rather fast," but suggests that "there may be a distinction between a public entity (which ... the Smithsonian is) and a private entity’s ability to use contract in this way."
Cornell's Peter Hirtle wishes the Smithsonian didn't try to assert control over its images, but says "everything I have read suggests that what the Smithsonian tried to do is legal."
Sunday, May 20, 2007
NPR on Stylometry
Stylometrician George Johnson was a guest on NPR's Talk of the Nation Friday. You can listen here. I mentioned Johnson's project last week here.
Perpetual Copyright? (UPDATED)
Novelist Mark Helprin has an editorial in today's New York Times arguing for infinite copyright. Glenn Reynolds thinks it would be unconstitutional (see here and, for a more in depth treatment of the subject, here). Cory Doctorow thinks the editorial is "silly." And Larry Lessig has set up a wiki page for a collective rebuttal.
UPDATE: Ilya Somin has a detailed post at the Volokh Conspiracy arguing that Helprin's proposal is "deeply flawed." Matthew Yglesias says "unfortunately, [Helprin] doesn't consider any of the various reasons that make this a terrible idea. Is it, for example, really such a bad thing that community theaters and schools all throughout the country (and, indeed, the world) can put on productions of Shakespeare's plays without paying stiff licensing fees?" Justin Levine (also thinking specifically of Shakespeare) says "Helprin's idea is not merely wrong - it would be utterly destructive to any semblance of artistic culture."
I'll let you know if I find anyone who likes the idea.
UPDATE: Ilya Somin has a detailed post at the Volokh Conspiracy arguing that Helprin's proposal is "deeply flawed." Matthew Yglesias says "unfortunately, [Helprin] doesn't consider any of the various reasons that make this a terrible idea. Is it, for example, really such a bad thing that community theaters and schools all throughout the country (and, indeed, the world) can put on productions of Shakespeare's plays without paying stiff licensing fees?" Justin Levine (also thinking specifically of Shakespeare) says "Helprin's idea is not merely wrong - it would be utterly destructive to any semblance of artistic culture."
I'll let you know if I find anyone who likes the idea.
Liz
Giving me the opportunity to post about Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor in the same week, this is from yesterday's New York Times:
"An American court ruled on Friday that Elizabeth Taylor can keep her van Gogh, Reuters reported. Ms. Taylor, 75, bought the 1889 painting 'View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Rémy' at a London auction in 1963 for [about $257,000]. South African and Canadian descendants of Margarete Mauthner, a Jewish woman who fled Germany in 1939, sued her in 2004, saying the work had been confiscated by the Nazis and should be returned to them under the Holocaust Victims Redress Act. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals backed a lower court, ruling that the family had waited too long in claiming the painting ..."
More from the San Francisco Chronicle here. The Ninth Circuit ruling is here. Shaun Martin at the University of San Diego School of Law says the decision "seems pretty right."
"An American court ruled on Friday that Elizabeth Taylor can keep her van Gogh, Reuters reported. Ms. Taylor, 75, bought the 1889 painting 'View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Rémy' at a London auction in 1963 for [about $257,000]. South African and Canadian descendants of Margarete Mauthner, a Jewish woman who fled Germany in 1939, sued her in 2004, saying the work had been confiscated by the Nazis and should be returned to them under the Holocaust Victims Redress Act. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals backed a lower court, ruling that the family had waited too long in claiming the painting ..."
More from the San Francisco Chronicle here. The Ninth Circuit ruling is here. Shaun Martin at the University of San Diego School of Law says the decision "seems pretty right."
Friday, May 18, 2007
Beautiful Fakes
In todays' New York Times, Grace Glueck reviews a show at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich called "Fakes and Forgeries: The Art of Deception," which is "devoted by and large to intentional art faking or forgery, applied to paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings and photographs, and the many means of doing it." Glueck writes:
"The show raises the question of what exactly a fake or forgery is, and how do you tell one from, say, an artist’s honest attempt to copy the work of another? Not simple questions, as Nancy Hall-Duncan, senior curator at the Bruce who assembled the show, makes clear in her catalog essay. As a basic definition she holds a forgery to be 'a work that, by mimicking the style of an artist or replicating his signature, represents itself as being produced by that artist,' constituting 'a deliberate attempt to deceive.'"
The show includes “pre-Columbian” knockoffs produced by BrÃgido Lara, who, when he was arrested in 1974 on grounds of trafficking in stolen artifacts, requested some clay and produced copies of the supposed "artifacts," earning his release. He ended up being hired by an anthropology museum as a restorer: "Now authorized to make legitimate replicas, he signs them but continues to assert that his creations, both signed and unsigned, are not forgeries." It also includes "probably the 20th century’s most famous forger," Han van Meegeren, whose “Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus,” painted to look like a Vermeer, was bought in 1937 by the Dutch Rembrandt Society for about $4.7 million in today’s dollars and donated to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. In 1945, at the end of World War II, he was arrested on charges of collaboration with the enemy and, in the process, confessed to forging 14 Dutch masterpieces, including “Christ and His Disciples,” and was sentenced to a year in prison (but died six weeks after sentencing).
Maureen Mullarkey reviewed the show earlier this week for The New York Sun.
"The show raises the question of what exactly a fake or forgery is, and how do you tell one from, say, an artist’s honest attempt to copy the work of another? Not simple questions, as Nancy Hall-Duncan, senior curator at the Bruce who assembled the show, makes clear in her catalog essay. As a basic definition she holds a forgery to be 'a work that, by mimicking the style of an artist or replicating his signature, represents itself as being produced by that artist,' constituting 'a deliberate attempt to deceive.'"
The show includes “pre-Columbian” knockoffs produced by BrÃgido Lara, who, when he was arrested in 1974 on grounds of trafficking in stolen artifacts, requested some clay and produced copies of the supposed "artifacts," earning his release. He ended up being hired by an anthropology museum as a restorer: "Now authorized to make legitimate replicas, he signs them but continues to assert that his creations, both signed and unsigned, are not forgeries." It also includes "probably the 20th century’s most famous forger," Han van Meegeren, whose “Christ and His Disciples at Emmaus,” painted to look like a Vermeer, was bought in 1937 by the Dutch Rembrandt Society for about $4.7 million in today’s dollars and donated to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. In 1945, at the end of World War II, he was arrested on charges of collaboration with the enemy and, in the process, confessed to forging 14 Dutch masterpieces, including “Christ and His Disciples,” and was sentenced to a year in prison (but died six weeks after sentencing).
Maureen Mullarkey reviewed the show earlier this week for The New York Sun.
Albright-Knox "Auction Coups"
"Radical conservative" anti-deaccessionist Lee Rosenbaum notes that the Albright-Knox "scored unexpectedly large windfalls for its deaccessioned masterpieces at yesterday's African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art sale at Sotheby's: Its bronze Benin Head of an Oba fetched $4.74 million against an estimate of $1-1.5 million and its Aztec Stone Figure of the Goddess with Tasseled Headdress, Known as Chalchiuhtlicue, sold for $1.22 million, compared to an estimate of merely $100,000-150,000." All told, the museum earned nearly $6 million in this, the third of six auctions of items from its permanent collection. The Buffalo News says that brings the total up to $26 million, a figure that is "expected to increase dramatically by the final auction June 7, when the gallery auctions a number of antiquities, most notably the highly valued bronze 'Artemis and the Stag.'" They are auctioning off another 10 items of American Indian art today, expected to bring a total of less than $100,000.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
"A Bombshell Decision"
That's how Anthony Falzone, Executive Director of Stanford's Fair Use Project, describes the Marilyn Monroe opinion discussed earlier here and here:
"Is this a big deal? You bet. Licensing dead celebrities is a multi-million dollar business. But California ... only passed the statute creating post-mortem publicity rights in 1984. Lots of the hottest dead celebrities (licensing-wise) died long before that, and millions of licensing revenue stands to disappear under this decision. The beneficiaries of this windfall will not let that money go without a fight. So I expect to hear a lot more about this issue."
"Is this a big deal? You bet. Licensing dead celebrities is a multi-million dollar business. But California ... only passed the statute creating post-mortem publicity rights in 1984. Lots of the hottest dead celebrities (licensing-wise) died long before that, and millions of licensing revenue stands to disappear under this decision. The beneficiaries of this windfall will not let that money go without a fight. So I expect to hear a lot more about this issue."
Perishable Art
The Wall Street Journal this week looked at "how ... collectors preserve and insure works that may be short-lived -- often by design":
"Some of the priciest contemporary works -- such as Damien Hirst's dead shark in a tank and Jeff Koons's 40-foot-high topiary puppy -- are made from perishable or delicate materials whose deterioration isn't covered by insurers. Other works ... use synthetic paints that may not hold up over time and aren't easily restored .... Some installation pieces are even meant to disappear over time."
The article points out that these works create all sorts of insurance complications:
"Insurance policies almost always rule out insuring art objects for 'inherent vice,' which includes natural deterioration such as rot and mold, or mechanical wear and tear. Vermin and insect damage, which affect textiles and objects made from organic materials, are also excluded from coverage. Insurance policies cover only damage from unexpected events like fire, theft and accidents. Because of the difficulty of restoring some fragile contemporary artworks, some art insurers are charging as much as double the premium they would charge for more durable pieces such as oil paintings. Policies also may stipulate that collectors take painstaking conservation efforts, such as controlling light and temperature in the environment, as a condition of providing coverage. If the conditions aren't met, claims won't be paid."
Lawprof Frank Pasquale says, with works of this sort, "we might expect all manner of contractual specs to accompany purchases," and connects this story to one by Marc Spiegler in New York Magazine not too long ago, about the young artist Terence Koh:
"What’s shocking is that collectors are willing to pay such prices for pieces of uncertain durability. From the beginning, Koh has made a habit of using unusual materials: chocolate, semen, blood, vomit, Chanel lipstick. At first, Koh and [and his dealer Javier] Peres made the mistake of selling the work without detailing its fragility. 'In our rush, our naïveté, it seemed clear that this work was going to change—I mean, it was made of ashes and chocolate. And collectors would later come and say, "This broke, can you fix it?"' Peres recalls. 'Now, no work of Terence leaves my gallery without a release, because his materials are quite unusual."
"Some of the priciest contemporary works -- such as Damien Hirst's dead shark in a tank and Jeff Koons's 40-foot-high topiary puppy -- are made from perishable or delicate materials whose deterioration isn't covered by insurers. Other works ... use synthetic paints that may not hold up over time and aren't easily restored .... Some installation pieces are even meant to disappear over time."
The article points out that these works create all sorts of insurance complications:
"Insurance policies almost always rule out insuring art objects for 'inherent vice,' which includes natural deterioration such as rot and mold, or mechanical wear and tear. Vermin and insect damage, which affect textiles and objects made from organic materials, are also excluded from coverage. Insurance policies cover only damage from unexpected events like fire, theft and accidents. Because of the difficulty of restoring some fragile contemporary artworks, some art insurers are charging as much as double the premium they would charge for more durable pieces such as oil paintings. Policies also may stipulate that collectors take painstaking conservation efforts, such as controlling light and temperature in the environment, as a condition of providing coverage. If the conditions aren't met, claims won't be paid."
Lawprof Frank Pasquale says, with works of this sort, "we might expect all manner of contractual specs to accompany purchases," and connects this story to one by Marc Spiegler in New York Magazine not too long ago, about the young artist Terence Koh:
"What’s shocking is that collectors are willing to pay such prices for pieces of uncertain durability. From the beginning, Koh has made a habit of using unusual materials: chocolate, semen, blood, vomit, Chanel lipstick. At first, Koh and [and his dealer Javier] Peres made the mistake of selling the work without detailing its fragility. 'In our rush, our naïveté, it seemed clear that this work was going to change—I mean, it was made of ashes and chocolate. And collectors would later come and say, "This broke, can you fix it?"' Peres recalls. 'Now, no work of Terence leaves my gallery without a release, because his materials are quite unusual."
Google Thumbnails
A decision from the Ninth Circuit yesterday in a closely-watched case involving Google's display of thumbnail images in search results. The Washington Post has the story: "A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that Google did not infringe on the copyrights of an adult publishing company by displaying thumbnail images of its nude photographs, handing Internet search companies a victory by allowing the display of such miniature pictures in search results." The decision is here. John Ottaviani has a good summary here. Lawprof Alfred Yen has some thoughts.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
The Albright-Knox Deaccessioning Continues (UPDATED)
Buffalo Business First reports: "The Albright-Knox Art Gallery stands to gain another $1.5 million to $2 million this week as the next series of artwork is sold in auctions Thursday and Friday at Sotheby's in New York. Fourteen pieces of art are included in auctions of African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian art on May 17; with another 10 pieces included in the American Indian art sale May 18."
Previous sales have already brought in $23 million for the museum.
UPDATE: More today from Lindsay Pollock in The Art Newspaper.
Previous sales have already brought in $23 million for the museum.
UPDATE: More today from Lindsay Pollock in The Art Newspaper.
Gamble Pays Off
I mentioned last week the $46 million guarantee Sotheby's gave to David Rockefeller for the sale of his Rothko. The work sold last night for $72.8 million, setting records, according to Carol Vogel in The New York Times, "for both the artist and for any contemporary work at auction."
More on guarantees, and other "tricks of the auction trade," from Lee Rosenbaum in yesterdays' Wall Street Journal. Lots of interesting stuff, including that Sotheby's recently "collected $20 million from its 'key man' life insurance policy for Robert Noortman, the Dutch dealer in old masters who died unexpectedly in January, only seven months after the auction house acquired his gallery -- and its $56.41 million inventory -- in exchange for Sotheby's shares worth about $56.5 million, as well as the assumption of about $26 million in debt."
More on guarantees, and other "tricks of the auction trade," from Lee Rosenbaum in yesterdays' Wall Street Journal. Lots of interesting stuff, including that Sotheby's recently "collected $20 million from its 'key man' life insurance policy for Robert Noortman, the Dutch dealer in old masters who died unexpectedly in January, only seven months after the auction house acquired his gallery -- and its $56.41 million inventory -- in exchange for Sotheby's shares worth about $56.5 million, as well as the assumption of about $26 million in debt."
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Monroe Case: The View from Indiana
CMG Worldwide Inc., which came out on the losing end in the Marilyn Monroe case discussed here last week, is headquartered in Indiana, primarily, one assumes, because of its 100-year-long postmortem right of publicity, and this weekend the Indianapolis Business Journal took a look at the decision. The bottom line:
"[CMG] represents about 250 famous people, most of them dead, including James Dean, Babe Ruth and Buddy Holly. Monroe, one of its highest-grossing clients, has raked in more than $30 million in licensing fees in the last dozen years for everything from TV commercials to T-shirts—with roughly 25 percent of that windfall landing in CMG coffers. But that spigot of cash could slow to a drip if a higher court upholds a ruling early this month by a federal judge in New York, and if a series of similar lawsuits nationwide result in additional setbacks for CMG."
"[CMG] represents about 250 famous people, most of them dead, including James Dean, Babe Ruth and Buddy Holly. Monroe, one of its highest-grossing clients, has raked in more than $30 million in licensing fees in the last dozen years for everything from TV commercials to T-shirts—with roughly 25 percent of that windfall landing in CMG coffers. But that spigot of cash could slow to a drip if a higher court upholds a ruling early this month by a federal judge in New York, and if a series of similar lawsuits nationwide result in additional setbacks for CMG."
Seriality
This week's New York Times Magazine introduces a new "Sunday Serial" by crime writer Ian Rankin that they describe this way: "What happens when a rich, bored businessman and his art-world friends team up with a notorious Edinburgh gangster to steal paintings?" The first installment is here.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Moir Renoir
The Art Newspaper reports that the Renoir family archive has been acquired by Rima Fine Art in Arizona. Of course multiple lawsuits ensued. I can't even keep track any more. Read for yourself here.
Stylomite!!!
The Christian Science Monitor reports on a potential new weapon in the authenticity wars: stylometry. Which is pretty much what it sounds like:
"While the specifics of stylometric analysis differ depending on the medium being examined, the basic strategy is similar across the board. First, the work of art in question is divided into components, which can be words, high and low tones, or different visual frequencies (the frequency of a still pond in a painting is distinct from that of a busy flower garden, for example). Next, each component is subjected to statistical tests that measure how they compare to components of authentic works created by the same artist."
More from Wikipedia, which points out it's actually not so new: "Stylometry grew out of earlier techniques of analyzing texts for evidence of authenticity, authorial identity, and other questions. An early example is Lorenzo Valla's 1439 proof that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, an argument based partly on a comparison of the Latin with that used in authentic 4th Century documents."
"While the specifics of stylometric analysis differ depending on the medium being examined, the basic strategy is similar across the board. First, the work of art in question is divided into components, which can be words, high and low tones, or different visual frequencies (the frequency of a still pond in a painting is distinct from that of a busy flower garden, for example). Next, each component is subjected to statistical tests that measure how they compare to components of authentic works created by the same artist."
More from Wikipedia, which points out it's actually not so new: "Stylometry grew out of earlier techniques of analyzing texts for evidence of authenticity, authorial identity, and other questions. An early example is Lorenzo Valla's 1439 proof that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, an argument based partly on a comparison of the Latin with that used in authentic 4th Century documents."
Friday, May 11, 2007
"Sotheby’s and Its Landlord Battle Over Building’s Sale"
Sorry for the light posting. I was out of town for a couple of days. Jumping back in, today's New York Times reports on a dispute that's brewing between Sotheby's and developer/art collector Aby Rosen, who bought the Sotheby's building for $175 million in 2002 and has now put it up for auction seeking at least $500 million. (Final bids were due today.) It's a little hard to figure out from the article what's going on. It quotes anonymous sources as saying "Sotheby’s contends that Mr. Rosen should have offered to sell the building back to Sotheby’s in 2005 for about $300 million, under what is known in real estate circles as its 'right of first offer.'" Rosen's marketing materials do state that any sale "is subject to Sotheby’s right to match the best offer he gets, according to a real estate executive who has seen the document," so it sounds like the dispute is over how to interpret the relevant provision of the contract. (The article also says "Sotheby’s did not discover this right [of first offer] until after Mr. Rosen put the building on the auction block this year," but that doesn't sound right.) Stay tuned.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Neverending Story
The UK Telegraph had an exhaustive story this weekend on what the headline called "the Renoir wars" -- the ongoing series of lawsuits between the descendants of Renoir and an assistant namd Richard Guino. It began in 1965, with Guino suing the Renoir estate, claiming to be c0-author of a series of sculptures created from 1913 until Renoir's death in 1919 (nine months after Guino's death in 1973, he prevailed in the lawsuit) and continues today with the Arizona lawsuit that was mentioned earlier here.
More on the latest twists from the Art Newspaper here.
More on the latest twists from the Art Newspaper here.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Scary Art Theft
A violent art theft in the U.K. over the weekend:
"[Five artworks] by LS Lowry have been stolen by robbers who tied up their owner and threatened his family with knives. Louise Aird, 40, let the gang in to the house ... thinking it was a post delivery. Three men, armed with knives, tied her art collector husband Ivan up, in what police said was a 'terrifying' raid."
The BBC story is here. Derek Fincham says "the trick of course will be how the thieves can cash in on the theft."
"[Five artworks] by LS Lowry have been stolen by robbers who tied up their owner and threatened his family with knives. Louise Aird, 40, let the gang in to the house ... thinking it was a post delivery. Three men, armed with knives, tied her art collector husband Ivan up, in what police said was a 'terrifying' raid."
The BBC story is here. Derek Fincham says "the trick of course will be how the thieves can cash in on the theft."
Fisk Update
Jonathan Marx reports in The Nashville Tennessean that the court has approved the Tennessee Attorney General's motion to intervene (mentioned earlier here) in the lawsuit between Fisk University and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
The Nashville Scene's Elizabeth Ulrich applauds, saying the two paintings at issue "may have a fighting chance after all." I'm not sure what it is that the AG wants to see happen. Is it that the works not be sold at all, which would presumably make the "radical conservatives" happy? Or is it that they be sold for a price higher than the one Fisk originally agreed to (on the basis of an appraisal that was two years old at the time), which would presumably make Yale's Jock Reynolds happy but might also result in the O'Keeffe painting not going to the publicly accessible O'Keeffe museum but rather to some private collection somewhere? What is it that people want here?
Next hearing is May 31.
The Nashville Scene's Elizabeth Ulrich applauds, saying the two paintings at issue "may have a fighting chance after all." I'm not sure what it is that the AG wants to see happen. Is it that the works not be sold at all, which would presumably make the "radical conservatives" happy? Or is it that they be sold for a price higher than the one Fisk originally agreed to (on the basis of an appraisal that was two years old at the time), which would presumably make Yale's Jock Reynolds happy but might also result in the O'Keeffe painting not going to the publicly accessible O'Keeffe museum but rather to some private collection somewhere? What is it that people want here?
Next hearing is May 31.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Something had to give
A potentially huge decision in the Southern District of New York late last week: Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that Marilyn Monroe's right of publicity -- that is, the right to control the use of her name, image, or likeness on merchandise -- did not survive her death in 1962. The AP story is here. The opinion is here. The simple logic of the decision was: since (1) "only property actually owned by a testator at the time of her death can be devised by will" and (2) there was no relevant jurisdiction that "recognized descendible postmortem publicity rights at the time of Ms. Monroe's death," therefore (3) "she could not transfer any such rights through her will." (Or, as Marty Schwimmer puts it: "a post-mortem right cannot be created after death.")
Bill Zale, editor of CCH Advertising Law Guide, has this summary:
"To this day, New York law ... limits its statutory publicity rights to living persons, the court said. California passed a postmortem right of publicity statute in 1984 .... Before that, a common law right of publicity existed in California, but it was not freely transferable or descendible, according to the court. Indiana first recognized a descendible, postmortem right of publicity in 1994, when it passed the Right of Publicity Act .... Thus, any publicity rights that Monroe enjoyed during her lifetime were extinguished at her death by operation of law, the court concluded."
Bill Zale, editor of CCH Advertising Law Guide, has this summary:
"To this day, New York law ... limits its statutory publicity rights to living persons, the court said. California passed a postmortem right of publicity statute in 1984 .... Before that, a common law right of publicity existed in California, but it was not freely transferable or descendible, according to the court. Indiana first recognized a descendible, postmortem right of publicity in 1994, when it passed the Right of Publicity Act .... Thus, any publicity rights that Monroe enjoyed during her lifetime were extinguished at her death by operation of law, the court concluded."
Thursday, May 03, 2007
More Guarantees
In a preview of the upcoming spring auctions, Carol Vogel says the competition between Sotheby’s and Christie’s is heating up, and "supergenerous" guarantees — "undisclosed minimum prices paid to the sellers regardless of a sale’s outcome" — are playing a central role:
"According to recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sotheby’s has promised sellers nearly $300 million in guarantees for property being sold this spring and summer. Since Christie’s is privately held, it is not required to disclose such financial information, but executives there say it has about the same amount of money tied up in [guarantees]."
She adds that, on top of the guarantees, "Sotheby’s and Christie’s are routinely giving consignors a percentage of the fees it charges buyers." One example that's mentioned is a 1950 Rothko being sold by David Rockefeller at Sotheby's. The estimate for the painting is $40 million (nearly twice the previous auction record for Rothko, set in 2005), but Sotheby's has guaranteed Rockefeller $46 million, "not to mention giving him a lion’s share of the buyer’s premium." (He bought the painting in 1960 for less than $10,000.)
I posted on the increasing use of auction house guarantees here and here.
"According to recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sotheby’s has promised sellers nearly $300 million in guarantees for property being sold this spring and summer. Since Christie’s is privately held, it is not required to disclose such financial information, but executives there say it has about the same amount of money tied up in [guarantees]."
She adds that, on top of the guarantees, "Sotheby’s and Christie’s are routinely giving consignors a percentage of the fees it charges buyers." One example that's mentioned is a 1950 Rothko being sold by David Rockefeller at Sotheby's. The estimate for the painting is $40 million (nearly twice the previous auction record for Rothko, set in 2005), but Sotheby's has guaranteed Rockefeller $46 million, "not to mention giving him a lion’s share of the buyer’s premium." (He bought the painting in 1960 for less than $10,000.)
I posted on the increasing use of auction house guarantees here and here.
Monday, April 30, 2007
More on antiquities leasing
Derek Fincham is a fan of the idea, mentioned last week here:
"It is a pragmatic solution, and one that has as good a chance as any at pleasing the disparate interest groups that shape cultural policy. A couple potential drawbacks are the risk of transportation, problems insuring against theft, and upsetting those who feel antiquities belong in their source nation. It's an exciting idea though, and one that merits further study."
"It is a pragmatic solution, and one that has as good a chance as any at pleasing the disparate interest groups that shape cultural policy. A couple potential drawbacks are the risk of transportation, problems insuring against theft, and upsetting those who feel antiquities belong in their source nation. It's an exciting idea though, and one that merits further study."
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Barnes News (UPDATED)
In her Friday "Inside Art" column, Carol Vogel reported that the Barnes Foundation has announced its short list of six architects being considered to design its new building in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer's Inga Saffron has more, including the following on how the legal posture will affect the architecture:
"As a result of restrictions imposed by the court after a protracted legal battle, the foundation is obliged to replicate the exact arrangement of its existing galleries within the envelope of the new, larger museum. It also must hang the art collection assembled by founder Albert Barnes in the precise way he arranged it on the walls of his former Merion home. Some maintain the Barnes will even have to re-create its burlap wallpaper. Depending on how the court order is interpreted, the Barnes' new galleries could end up feeling a bit like frozen-in-time period rooms within the new museum shell."
UPDATE: Art historian Michael Lewis has some thoughts:
"According to the court decision, the new building must replicate exactly the layout, proportion, and materials of the original galleries, as well as Barnes’s famously eccentric hanging scheme. There is little scope for invention, other than in the way this simulacrum is to be enclosed. I spoke with Andrew Blanda, of the Philadelphia firm Sandvold/Blanda, who was interviewed for the Inquirer article. His prediction: 'I’m betting that the effect will be like a chunky jello salad: blocks of galleries encased in a glassy shell of nebulous public space.'"
"As a result of restrictions imposed by the court after a protracted legal battle, the foundation is obliged to replicate the exact arrangement of its existing galleries within the envelope of the new, larger museum. It also must hang the art collection assembled by founder Albert Barnes in the precise way he arranged it on the walls of his former Merion home. Some maintain the Barnes will even have to re-create its burlap wallpaper. Depending on how the court order is interpreted, the Barnes' new galleries could end up feeling a bit like frozen-in-time period rooms within the new museum shell."
UPDATE: Art historian Michael Lewis has some thoughts:
"According to the court decision, the new building must replicate exactly the layout, proportion, and materials of the original galleries, as well as Barnes’s famously eccentric hanging scheme. There is little scope for invention, other than in the way this simulacrum is to be enclosed. I spoke with Andrew Blanda, of the Philadelphia firm Sandvold/Blanda, who was interviewed for the Inquirer article. His prediction: 'I’m betting that the effect will be like a chunky jello salad: blocks of galleries encased in a glassy shell of nebulous public space.'"
Friday, April 27, 2007
Victory for Christie's
The Delaware Supreme Court has upheld the dismissal, on statute of limitations grounds, of a lawsuit brought by a couple who purchased a painting from Christie's in 1986 that they later learned was inauthentic. The AP story is here. The decision is here, though all it does is adopt the reasoning of the lower court decisions, here and here. That court had held that the cause of action accrued when they purchased the painting in 1986, and therefore Delaware's three-year statute of limitations expired in 1989 (though by contract Christie's extended the warranty period to six years). And it noted:
"A prudent purchaser of valuable art can readily safeguard his investment by verifying its authenticity with an independent third-party appraisal. Such prudence is especially advisable when art is purchased at auction. The sale price at auction inherently reflects a greater risk of authenticity than if the buyer purchased the work directly from the artist or from a gallery representing an artist. Truly, had they exercised reasonable due diligence, the [plaintiffs] could have discovered that the painting might not be a genuine work ... well within the limitations period and certainly within the six-year warranty period. They failed to do so and now ask Christie's to produce evidence and refresh its memory as to the sale of the painting that took place over 18 years ago. This is precisely the type of case which the statute of limitations ... seeks to prevent."
"A prudent purchaser of valuable art can readily safeguard his investment by verifying its authenticity with an independent third-party appraisal. Such prudence is especially advisable when art is purchased at auction. The sale price at auction inherently reflects a greater risk of authenticity than if the buyer purchased the work directly from the artist or from a gallery representing an artist. Truly, had they exercised reasonable due diligence, the [plaintiffs] could have discovered that the painting might not be a genuine work ... well within the limitations period and certainly within the six-year warranty period. They failed to do so and now ask Christie's to produce evidence and refresh its memory as to the sale of the painting that took place over 18 years ago. This is precisely the type of case which the statute of limitations ... seeks to prevent."
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Fifth Time a Charm?
In The Art Newspaper, Jason Edward Kaufman reports:
"For the fifth consecutive session of the US Congress, a bill has been introduced that would allow artists to deduct the fair market value of works of their own creation from their taxes, if they donate them to museums and libraries. Existing provisions enable collectors to deduct the value of donated art, but artists can deduct only the cost of supplies such as canvas and paint."
As the article notes, artists used to be able to deduct from their taxable income the full fair market value of contributed works. Since 1969, however, the deduction has been limited to the artist's "basis" in the work -- essentially, the cost of her materials.
Kaufman adds:
"The Senate has approved the bill five times since it was first introduced in 1999, but the House of Representatives never sanctioned the measure. The art museum association hopes to attach the bill to tax legislation before this session of Congress closes at the end of 2008."
You can read, and track, the bill, the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, here. A statement from Senator Leahy, co-sponsor of the bill, is here.
"For the fifth consecutive session of the US Congress, a bill has been introduced that would allow artists to deduct the fair market value of works of their own creation from their taxes, if they donate them to museums and libraries. Existing provisions enable collectors to deduct the value of donated art, but artists can deduct only the cost of supplies such as canvas and paint."
As the article notes, artists used to be able to deduct from their taxable income the full fair market value of contributed works. Since 1969, however, the deduction has been limited to the artist's "basis" in the work -- essentially, the cost of her materials.
Kaufman adds:
"The Senate has approved the bill five times since it was first introduced in 1999, but the House of Representatives never sanctioned the measure. The art museum association hopes to attach the bill to tax legislation before this session of Congress closes at the end of 2008."
You can read, and track, the bill, the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, here. A statement from Senator Leahy, co-sponsor of the bill, is here.
Antiquities Leasing?
Tyler Cowen points to a paper by Harvard economics professor Michael Kremer that makes the following argument:
"Most countries prohibit the export of certain antiquities. This practice often leads to illegal excavation and looting for the black market, which damages the items and destroys important aspects of the archaeological record. We argue that long-term leases of antiquities would raise revenue for the country of origin while preserving its long-term ownership rights. By putting the object into the hands of the highest value consumer in each period, allowing leases would generate incentives for protection of objects."
Tyler thinks it's worth a shot, but doesn't think it would make much of a difference:
"Collectors, being irrational creatures and 'completists,' wish to own rather than lease, even if the lease extends past their expected lifetimes. Museum donors wish to fund museum acquisitions more than museum borrowings. Similarly, it is much easier for a non-profit to raise money for buying a building than leasing one long-term. So the demand for leased antiquities won't be all that huge."
"Most countries prohibit the export of certain antiquities. This practice often leads to illegal excavation and looting for the black market, which damages the items and destroys important aspects of the archaeological record. We argue that long-term leases of antiquities would raise revenue for the country of origin while preserving its long-term ownership rights. By putting the object into the hands of the highest value consumer in each period, allowing leases would generate incentives for protection of objects."
Tyler thinks it's worth a shot, but doesn't think it would make much of a difference:
"Collectors, being irrational creatures and 'completists,' wish to own rather than lease, even if the lease extends past their expected lifetimes. Museum donors wish to fund museum acquisitions more than museum borrowings. Similarly, it is much easier for a non-profit to raise money for buying a building than leasing one long-term. So the demand for leased antiquities won't be all that huge."
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Austin Theft
From the UPI:
"A Texas art museum executive and his wife face accusations that they attempted to snatch paintings from an art festival.
"Police in Austin, Texas, arrested Nathan Sheppard, 37, and his wife Alexandra, 33, Sunday. Nathan Sheppard, the Austin Museum of Art finance and operations director, was charged with burglary and evading arrest, while his wife was named in a burglary count, the Austin American-Statesman reported Wednesday.
"Alexandra Sheppard was allegedly spotted by police Cmdr. Michael Jung walking among the tents of the Austin Fine Arts Festival in Republic Square Park early Sunday. S he told the officer she was looking for her car and then allegedly said something in a foreign language that included the word 'policia,' the newspaper said.
"The officer then saw that a zipper to one of the tents had been opened and allegedly noticed Nathan Sheppard inside holding two paintings. Sheppard allegedly dropped the paintings and ran. He was arrested a short distance away."
Sheppard has since resigned from the museum. David Nishimura hopes "his misdeeds were limited to his off-work time."
"A Texas art museum executive and his wife face accusations that they attempted to snatch paintings from an art festival.
"Police in Austin, Texas, arrested Nathan Sheppard, 37, and his wife Alexandra, 33, Sunday. Nathan Sheppard, the Austin Museum of Art finance and operations director, was charged with burglary and evading arrest, while his wife was named in a burglary count, the Austin American-Statesman reported Wednesday.
"Alexandra Sheppard was allegedly spotted by police Cmdr. Michael Jung walking among the tents of the Austin Fine Arts Festival in Republic Square Park early Sunday. S he told the officer she was looking for her car and then allegedly said something in a foreign language that included the word 'policia,' the newspaper said.
"The officer then saw that a zipper to one of the tents had been opened and allegedly noticed Nathan Sheppard inside holding two paintings. Sheppard allegedly dropped the paintings and ran. He was arrested a short distance away."
Sheppard has since resigned from the museum. David Nishimura hopes "his misdeeds were limited to his off-work time."
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
"This is an art school. For them to censor art ... is unacceptable." (UPDATED)
So says Lori Marcus, the lawyer for Joshua Stulman, the former Penn State graduate student whose art exhibit "Portraits of Terror" was canceled last year by the university. He's now filed a lawsuit against the school (as well as Director of the School of Visual Arts Charles Garoian, art professor Robert Yarber, and President Graham Spanier). The Penn State Daily Collegian summarizes:
"In April 2006, Garoian canceled a scheduled showing of Stulman's 10-piece exhibit, which was sponsored by Penn State Hillel and featured images of conflict in Palestinian territories. According to the lawsuit, Garoian said the exhibit violated Penn State's Policy AD42: Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment, and did not promote 'cultural diversity' or 'opportunities for democratic dialogue.'"
According to the article, the suit seeks an order requiring that Penn State now host the canceled exhibit and pay all costs of shipping, and also seeks money damages against Garoian for defamation (he apparently said the exhibit was nothing more than a "billboard for Hillel's political agenda," and that Stulman himself was simply a "megaphone").
Lawprof David Bernstein was all over this when it was happening last year.
UPDATE: Via Eugene Volokh, here's the complaint in the lawsuit.
"In April 2006, Garoian canceled a scheduled showing of Stulman's 10-piece exhibit, which was sponsored by Penn State Hillel and featured images of conflict in Palestinian territories. According to the lawsuit, Garoian said the exhibit violated Penn State's Policy AD42: Statement on Nondiscrimination and Harassment, and did not promote 'cultural diversity' or 'opportunities for democratic dialogue.'"
According to the article, the suit seeks an order requiring that Penn State now host the canceled exhibit and pay all costs of shipping, and also seeks money damages against Garoian for defamation (he apparently said the exhibit was nothing more than a "billboard for Hillel's political agenda," and that Stulman himself was simply a "megaphone").
Lawprof David Bernstein was all over this when it was happening last year.
UPDATE: Via Eugene Volokh, here's the complaint in the lawsuit.
Scream Sentence
From this morning's New York Times:
"Sentences from five and a half to nine and a half years were imposed yesterday by an appeals court in Oslo on the gunman, the mastermind and the getaway driver in the theft of the Edvard Munch masterpieces 'The Scream' and 'Madonna,' The Associated Press reported. ... They were also ordered to pay a total of $263,000 in compensation to the city of Oslo, owner of the paintings, which were stolen in a daring daylight robbery at the Munch Museum in 2004. The paintings were recovered in August, but both were damaged."
"Sentences from five and a half to nine and a half years were imposed yesterday by an appeals court in Oslo on the gunman, the mastermind and the getaway driver in the theft of the Edvard Munch masterpieces 'The Scream' and 'Madonna,' The Associated Press reported. ... They were also ordered to pay a total of $263,000 in compensation to the city of Oslo, owner of the paintings, which were stolen in a daring daylight robbery at the Munch Museum in 2004. The paintings were recovered in August, but both were damaged."
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Gonesky
The New York Times reports:
"Workers for Transport of London, the government body responsible for the city’s transport systems, have painted over a mural by Banksy, the celebrated graffiti artist, BBC News reported yesterday. The work, right, near the Old Street underground station, was taken from the film 'Pulp Fiction' but showed the actors Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta clutching bananas rather than guns. It was one of Banksy’s best-known efforts, estimated by some to be worth [$600,000]. .... In March most of a Banksy mural in East London was stolen, and an early work was mistakenly painted over in the city of Bristol by graffiti-removal contractors. In February two smaller works in London were also painted over."
A spokesman for the agency says their "graffiti-removal teams are staffed by professional cleaners, not professional art critics." (Norm Geras wonders if that's a slur on the staff.)
You can see an image of the work with the BBC story here. Previous mentions of Banksy here and here.
"Workers for Transport of London, the government body responsible for the city’s transport systems, have painted over a mural by Banksy, the celebrated graffiti artist, BBC News reported yesterday. The work, right, near the Old Street underground station, was taken from the film 'Pulp Fiction' but showed the actors Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta clutching bananas rather than guns. It was one of Banksy’s best-known efforts, estimated by some to be worth [$600,000]. .... In March most of a Banksy mural in East London was stolen, and an early work was mistakenly painted over in the city of Bristol by graffiti-removal contractors. In February two smaller works in London were also painted over."
A spokesman for the agency says their "graffiti-removal teams are staffed by professional cleaners, not professional art critics." (Norm Geras wonders if that's a slur on the staff.)
You can see an image of the work with the BBC story here. Previous mentions of Banksy here and here.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Graffiti Charge
This morning's New York Times has a story on graffiti artist Alain Maridueña, who has been charged by city prosecutors with "14 criminal counts, including trespass, criminal mischief, and making graffiti. If convicted, he could potentially face decades in prison and huge financial penalties." The New York Press blog discussed this last month.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Chihulys Found
The Dale Chihuly sculptures stolen from an exhibit at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden last week have been found in a vacant lot less than a mile away. Story here. The original report was that "seven to 12" works were stolen, but now they're saying it was (exactly) eight and all of them have been recovered -- though unfortunately not in great shape.
Intervention
In today's Nashville Tennessean, Jonathan Marx reports that the State Attorney General Bob Cooper has petitioned the Court for permission to intervene in the lawsuit between Fisk University and the O’Keeffe Museum. The motion argues that he has an interest in the case "because it involves the administration and/or disposition of a charitable trust, or in the alternative, a charitable gift." Elizabeth Ulrich has more at the Nashville Scene's blog:
"Now that Cooper's given the university another chance to get it right, he doesn't seem sure that Fisk will. ... According to the motion, Cooper wants to make sure that the university explores 'all possible strategies to preserve the collection in its entirety at Fisk.' If that's not possible, he's going to try to make sure that 'Radiator' never hits the auction block. He says the painting 'is clearly the signature piece and heart of the Stieglitz Collection.' He'd rather see Hartley's 'Painting No. 3' or another piece of the collection go."
"Now that Cooper's given the university another chance to get it right, he doesn't seem sure that Fisk will. ... According to the motion, Cooper wants to make sure that the university explores 'all possible strategies to preserve the collection in its entirety at Fisk.' If that's not possible, he's going to try to make sure that 'Radiator' never hits the auction block. He says the painting 'is clearly the signature piece and heart of the Stieglitz Collection.' He'd rather see Hartley's 'Painting No. 3' or another piece of the collection go."
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Cohen Speaks
Also from the Apr. 17 ARTnewsletter, and also not online, an interesting quote from Saul Cohen, president of the O'Keeffe Museum, that I don't think I've seen anywhere else, in reaction to the Tennessee Attorney General's cancellation of the Fisk University settlement on the grounds that the $7 million price the university and the museum agreed to was too low:
"We knew that an auction house could do better, and we knew that Fisk had received offers for more. But, the fact is, if Fisk breached the condition of the bequest Georgia O'Keeffe made, it was obligated to just give the work to the museum, which would have been much worse for them than selling it for $7 million. The $7 million would help Fisk to carry on, and it would give the painting to a museum, where it likely belongs."
I made a similar point here.
"We knew that an auction house could do better, and we knew that Fisk had received offers for more. But, the fact is, if Fisk breached the condition of the bequest Georgia O'Keeffe made, it was obligated to just give the work to the museum, which would have been much worse for them than selling it for $7 million. The $7 million would help Fisk to carry on, and it would give the painting to a museum, where it likely belongs."
I made a similar point here.
$40 million elbow?
It's not online, so no link, but the Apr. 17 ARTnewsletter reports that, according to a "source familiar with the case," Steve Wynn's lawsuit against Lloyd's of London over his elbow-damaged Picasso "settled for approximately $40 million." He reportedly had been seeking $54 million, so not bad.
Fernwood Suit
In the Maine Antique Digest, Daniel Grant reports that "a group of investors in Fernwood Art Investments, a multimillion-dollar art hedge fund founded in 2004, [has] filed a lawsuit .... against the company’s founder, chairman, and CEO Bruce Taub. The suit claims embezzlement of $8 million."
Taub was also sued for $1 million last year by Roy Disney's Shamrock Holdings Inc.
Grant says that "[j]ust two years ago, art investment hedge funds seemed to be an idea whose time had come. ... Between a dozen and 20 art investment funds around the world have either come into existence within the past two years or were in the process of being launched." But "[o]nly the London-based Fine Art Fund remains as a working art investment program." NYU economist Michael Moses is quoted as saying, "I think what we may be seeing is not less interest in diversifying one’s portfolio to include art but, rather, that individuals who decide to invest in art want to do it on their own. They don’t need a manager for their art investments, and that causes an art fund to have a lot of headwinds to sail into." There is also this.
Taub was also sued for $1 million last year by Roy Disney's Shamrock Holdings Inc.
Grant says that "[j]ust two years ago, art investment hedge funds seemed to be an idea whose time had come. ... Between a dozen and 20 art investment funds around the world have either come into existence within the past two years or were in the process of being launched." But "[o]nly the London-based Fine Art Fund remains as a working art investment program." NYU economist Michael Moses is quoted as saying, "I think what we may be seeing is not less interest in diversifying one’s portfolio to include art but, rather, that individuals who decide to invest in art want to do it on their own. They don’t need a manager for their art investments, and that causes an art fund to have a lot of headwinds to sail into." There is also this.
Monday, April 16, 2007
You Conduit Too
In a follow-up post on the issue of internationally-targeted charitable donations, Lee Rosenbaum writes:
"There's one thing, though, that puzzles me in Zaretsky's pro-'friends' group analysis. He advises us:
"U.S.-based nonprofits may (1) engage directly in charitable activities overseas and (2) re-donate funds they receive to foreign charities (in the latter case, as long as the intermediate U.S. charity is not deemed to be a 'mere conduit').
Isn't 'mere conduit' a perfect description of these 'friends' groups, whose raison d'être is to funnel tax deductible U.S. donations to foreign institutions?"
She has every right to be puzzled; on first glance (and maybe second) "friends of" organizations do seem to violate the "conduit" restrictions. Nevertheless, the IRS has for years relied on a "control and discretion" theory to allow donations to such groups to qualify for the charitable deduction. So long as the "friends of" organization maintains sufficient control and discretion over the use of funds donated to it, the deduction remains intact. But there's no denying that the "friends of" groups push the water's edge policy almost to the breaking point. The key IRS rulings are Revenue Rulings 63-252 and 66-79.
"There's one thing, though, that puzzles me in Zaretsky's pro-'friends' group analysis. He advises us:
"U.S.-based nonprofits may (1) engage directly in charitable activities overseas and (2) re-donate funds they receive to foreign charities (in the latter case, as long as the intermediate U.S. charity is not deemed to be a 'mere conduit').
Isn't 'mere conduit' a perfect description of these 'friends' groups, whose raison d'être is to funnel tax deductible U.S. donations to foreign institutions?"
She has every right to be puzzled; on first glance (and maybe second) "friends of" organizations do seem to violate the "conduit" restrictions. Nevertheless, the IRS has for years relied on a "control and discretion" theory to allow donations to such groups to qualify for the charitable deduction. So long as the "friends of" organization maintains sufficient control and discretion over the use of funds donated to it, the deduction remains intact. But there's no denying that the "friends of" groups push the water's edge policy almost to the breaking point. The key IRS rulings are Revenue Rulings 63-252 and 66-79.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Against Original Location Fundamentalism
The Cranky Professor pushes back (crankily) against those making a fuss over Thomas Jefferson University's Eakins sales:
"Why shouldn't it be alright to say something like 'We're a medical school, not an art museum. If we can get $100 million dollars to plow into medical education that's more important than the pious preservation in one room of three portraits of mid-19th century professors.' ... I want doctors who were trained with all the latest toys. I want a cure for cancer. Keep the art in museums. . . .
"Should the collection or any individual painting stay in Philadelphia? Why on earth - unless they raise the money for them. They did raise enough between two institutions and a public outcry to keep one of the three. Should the Elgin Marbles go back to the Acropolis? What is the painting about? The history of art? The history of medicine? Philadelphia in the mid-19th Century? Unless you're going to be an Original Location fundamentalist there's really very little justification not to move art from place to place on the basis of price."
"Why shouldn't it be alright to say something like 'We're a medical school, not an art museum. If we can get $100 million dollars to plow into medical education that's more important than the pious preservation in one room of three portraits of mid-19th century professors.' ... I want doctors who were trained with all the latest toys. I want a cure for cancer. Keep the art in museums. . . .
"Should the collection or any individual painting stay in Philadelphia? Why on earth - unless they raise the money for them. They did raise enough between two institutions and a public outcry to keep one of the three. Should the Elgin Marbles go back to the Acropolis? What is the painting about? The history of art? The history of medicine? Philadelphia in the mid-19th Century? Unless you're going to be an Original Location fundamentalist there's really very little justification not to move art from place to place on the basis of price."
Back On
A lot of people were disappointed last month when the news broke that Stanford Professor Carol Shloss had settled her lawsuit against the Joyce Estate. This may make it up to them: "Having obtained what she sought in her complaint (the right to publish her Electronic Supplement on the internet) and more (the right to publish it in print, too), Professor Carol Shloss has asked the Court to order the Estate to pay her attorneys' fees based on the unsubstantiated positions the Estate took for years, only to back down once finally challenged." The motion for attorneys' fees is here.
At Ars Technica, Nate Anderson says: "Essentially, this boils down to 'bullies need to be taught a lesson.'"
At Ars Technica, Nate Anderson says: "Essentially, this boils down to 'bullies need to be taught a lesson.'"
Chihuly Theft
The Bradenton Herald reports that "seven to 12" Dale Chihuly sculptures were stolen from an exhibition at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Florida last week. (Not sure why the uncertainty about the number of works.) It apparently was a second try -- an earlier attempt in December ended with the works recovered "thanks to an anonymous tipster." The sculptures were supposedly protected by a ''sophisticated surveillance system that includes cameras and 24-hour guards." Fairchild's chief operating officer says the works are worth "tens of thousands of dollars each, at least."
According to the Herald, these were not the first reported thefts of Chihuly's work. In 2004 a work entitled ''Moccasin Brown Desert Basket Set with Turquoise Blue Lip Wrap'' was stolen from a gallery in Oregon, and in 2003 a man walked out of a Seattle hotel with a $40,000 glass bowl. And there are "at least 25" Chihuly works listed in the Art Loss Register's stolen art database.
According to the Herald, these were not the first reported thefts of Chihuly's work. In 2004 a work entitled ''Moccasin Brown Desert Basket Set with Turquoise Blue Lip Wrap'' was stolen from a gallery in Oregon, and in 2003 a man walked out of a Seattle hotel with a $40,000 glass bowl. And there are "at least 25" Chihuly works listed in the Art Loss Register's stolen art database.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Wading In (UPDATED)
Lee Rosenbaum invites me to join the conversation she's been having with Tyler Green about the tax treatment of charitable donations to foreign museums. Should international and domestic donations be treated the same for tax purposes? Lee says no; Tyler takes the universalist view and says yes. (Ed Winkleman sides with Tyler.)
I think it's a complicated question, and it depends on what you think the purpose of the charitable deduction is in the first place. First, the basic structure of the law. Our tax system does in fact privilege domestic over foreign giving, at least to some extent. Since the 1930's, we've had what some call a "water's edge policy": for a charitable contribution to be deductible under section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code, the donee must be "created or organized in the United States or in any possession thereof, or under the law of the United States, any State, the District of Columbia, or any possession of the United States." (That's for income tax purposes; gift and estate tax deductions are not subject to the same limitation.) On the other hand, as the discussion between Lee and Tyler suggests, there's plenty of international philanthropy taking place, and that's because U.S.-based nonprofits may (1) engage directly in charitable activities overseas and (2) re-donate funds they receive to foreign charities (in the latter case, as long as the intermediate U.S. charity is not deemed to be a "mere conduit"). So our current tax policy does not preclude deductibility for internationally-targeted donations, but does make them a little trickier (e.g., the foreign charity has to set up, and properly maintain, a "friends of" organization to receive the donations).
Is that the right policy? Should foreign and domestic charitable donations be treated the same? I guess, to the extent you see the deduction simply as a way of encouraging people to do good things, then, yeah, there doesn't seem to be any strong reason to distinguish between doing good things here and doing good things overseas. If we're going to encourage people to support art, what's the difference between supporting art in Philadelphia and supporting art at the Hermitage? As Tyler says, it's all part of our "common cultural history."
That's certainly one way to look at the question (and, as Lee concedes, probably how most people see it). An alternative approach would be to view the charitable deduction as a kind of "substitute" for direct expenditures the government would otherwise have to make. As the legislative history of the Revenue Act of 1938 (which enacted the "water's edge" policy) put it, "the [deduction] is based upon the theory that the Government is compensated for the loss of revenue by its relief from the financial burden which would otherwise have to be met by appropriations from public funds, and by the benefits resulting from the promotion of the general welfare." To the extent you buy this rationale for the deduction (and I'm not sure I do), distinguishing between domestic and foreign donations starts to look less strange: the less money the Philadelphia Museum receives through private donations, the more the government is going to have to give to it. But the same is not true of the Hermitage or the Mauritshuis. I don't think anyone would argue that private donations to those institutions are a substitute for funding the U.S. government would otherwise feel compelled to provide.
So if one wanted to construct a defense of Lee's position, I think that's generally what it would look like. As I say above, I'm not sure how convincing it is, though. Notwithstanding that legislative history, I don't think the best way to think about the deduction is as a substitute for spending the government would otherwise be making. (To take one example, how then to explain the deductibility of gifts to religious organizations, which clearly do not provide services the government would otherwise be providing?) I think that, over time, the deduction really has come to be seen as a way of encouraging people to "do good," and it's hard to see how helping victims of the 2004 tsunami, or helping preserve the Hermitage's Matisses, doesn't qualify as doing good.
UPDATE: JL at Modern Kicks weighs in here.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Shake Suit
The Maine Antique Digest reports on a lawsuit recently filed by New York dealer Will Ameringer against a Florida dealer named Arij Gasiunasen. Ameringer claims that, at an art fair in February, he and Gasiunasen "shook hands" on the sale of a Helen Frankenthaler painting for $500,000, but Gasiunasen then backed out of the deal and refused to pay.
The obvious issue that arises is the statute of frauds, which requires that any contract for the sale of goods in excess of $500 must be in writing. See N.Y. U.C.C. § 2-102 (applicability to "transactions in goods"); § 2-201 (contract for $500 or more is unenforceable "unless there is some writing sufficient to indicate that a contract for sale has been made between the parties and signed by the party [charged]").
The obvious issue that arises is the statute of frauds, which requires that any contract for the sale of goods in excess of $500 must be in writing. See N.Y. U.C.C. § 2-102 (applicability to "transactions in goods"); § 2-201 (contract for $500 or more is unenforceable "unless there is some writing sufficient to indicate that a contract for sale has been made between the parties and signed by the party [charged]").
Deaccessioning Doubleheader
Richard Lacayo is a one-man deaccessioning beat today. Over at his blog, he looks at Thomas Jefferson University's latest Eakins sale, pointing out that "though the American Association of Museums has guidelines that discourage deaccessioning for the purpose of funneling money into a school's general revenues, as Jefferson is doing with the millions from its Eakins sales, Jefferson does not actually have a campus museum, at least not in the way that, say, Yale, Harvard or Fisk all do. Much of its collection consists of portraits of distinguished faculty hung in various hallways. (In 1982, the school's three canvases by Eakins were moved to their own gallery, however, along a with a few other pieces.)"
And in the issue of Time magazine that hits newstands tomorrow, he has a really interesting piece entitled "The Impermanent Collection" which covers all the recent deaccessioning controversies.
And in the issue of Time magazine that hits newstands tomorrow, he has a really interesting piece entitled "The Impermanent Collection" which covers all the recent deaccessioning controversies.
"Fisk Follies"
Elizabeth Ulrich has a piece in the Nashville Scene on the latest twist in the Fisk-O'Keeffe lawsuit. She has more on the baffling lack of due diligence on the part of the university before it entered into the now-cancelled settlement:
"[Fisk spokesman Ken] West wouldn’t comment on whether Fisk’s financial problems could’ve driven school officials to rush into the settlement before determining the true worth of 'Radiator Building' … [I]t’s no surprise that university officials might not have known what 'Radiator Building' would’ve actually sold for, but there’s no indication that they made any effort to figure it out. West says he isn’t sure if Fisk consulted any outside art experts about the $7 million offer. West also wouldn’t comment on what Fisk did, outside of consulting Christie’s [two-year old $8.5 million] estimate, to weigh the museum’s offer ...."
She also offers this assessment of the underlying lawsuit:
"With the case returning to court now, it seems Fisk’s chances to prevail over the O’Keeffe Museum are not so good. Fisk’s main argument in court has been that 'Radiator Building' is a personal O’Keeffe painting—not part of the Stieglitz Collection—and not subject to the no-sale condition. But the director of the university’s galleries from 1992 to ’99, Kevin Grogan, has testified that 'Radiator Building' is indeed part of the main collection. ... Fisk hasn’t got money to blow on litigation. [Fisk attorney Mike] Norton says the settlement was appealing because Fisk knew it could burn a lot of time and money in court and still get stuck not being able to sell any paintings. 'When you’re in court, even if your chances of winning are three in four, would you take $10 today instead of $20 or $30 three years from now?' he says."
This is a point that I think is overlooked by those cheering the cancellation of the deal. You can't evaluate the adequacy of the price to be paid by the museum without also considering the strength of its legal claim. Let's say there was no doubt the no-sale condition applied and the university therefore had no right to sell the paintings. And let's say that, under those circumstances, the university approached the museum and asked it to consider waiving the no-sale condition, as a way of helping it solve its overall financial difficulties. In that scenario, it wouldn't seem crazy to me for the museum to ask for the O'Keeffe painting for free, in exchange for waiving the no-sale condition on the Hartley, thereby allowing the university to raise $8 or 10 or 15 million (Christie's appraised it at $8.5 million in 2005) that, because of the no-sale condition, it would not otherwise been able to raise. Now, once you relax the assumption that there is no doubt about the no-sale condition, the picture changes a little, but that may be why the museum was also throwing $7 million into the pot. If Ulrich is right about Fisk's chances of winning the lawsuit, supporters of the university may come to regret the decision to leave twenty million on the table just because it wasn't forty.
"[Fisk spokesman Ken] West wouldn’t comment on whether Fisk’s financial problems could’ve driven school officials to rush into the settlement before determining the true worth of 'Radiator Building' … [I]t’s no surprise that university officials might not have known what 'Radiator Building' would’ve actually sold for, but there’s no indication that they made any effort to figure it out. West says he isn’t sure if Fisk consulted any outside art experts about the $7 million offer. West also wouldn’t comment on what Fisk did, outside of consulting Christie’s [two-year old $8.5 million] estimate, to weigh the museum’s offer ...."
She also offers this assessment of the underlying lawsuit:
"With the case returning to court now, it seems Fisk’s chances to prevail over the O’Keeffe Museum are not so good. Fisk’s main argument in court has been that 'Radiator Building' is a personal O’Keeffe painting—not part of the Stieglitz Collection—and not subject to the no-sale condition. But the director of the university’s galleries from 1992 to ’99, Kevin Grogan, has testified that 'Radiator Building' is indeed part of the main collection. ... Fisk hasn’t got money to blow on litigation. [Fisk attorney Mike] Norton says the settlement was appealing because Fisk knew it could burn a lot of time and money in court and still get stuck not being able to sell any paintings. 'When you’re in court, even if your chances of winning are three in four, would you take $10 today instead of $20 or $30 three years from now?' he says."
This is a point that I think is overlooked by those cheering the cancellation of the deal. You can't evaluate the adequacy of the price to be paid by the museum without also considering the strength of its legal claim. Let's say there was no doubt the no-sale condition applied and the university therefore had no right to sell the paintings. And let's say that, under those circumstances, the university approached the museum and asked it to consider waiving the no-sale condition, as a way of helping it solve its overall financial difficulties. In that scenario, it wouldn't seem crazy to me for the museum to ask for the O'Keeffe painting for free, in exchange for waiving the no-sale condition on the Hartley, thereby allowing the university to raise $8 or 10 or 15 million (Christie's appraised it at $8.5 million in 2005) that, because of the no-sale condition, it would not otherwise been able to raise. Now, once you relax the assumption that there is no doubt about the no-sale condition, the picture changes a little, but that may be why the museum was also throwing $7 million into the pot. If Ulrich is right about Fisk's chances of winning the lawsuit, supporters of the university may come to regret the decision to leave twenty million on the table just because it wasn't forty.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Gone
Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum has bought one of the two additional Eakins paintings Thomas Jefferson University recently put up for sale. Carol Vogel has the story in The New York Times here. Sources tell her the price was "about $2o million." There was no matching period this time, though, according to the president of the university, local institutions were "aware that this painting was available." Vogel notes that this "is not the end to Thomas Jefferson University’s Eakins saga. It still owns an Eakins portrait of the anatomy professor William S. Forbes. 'We will entertain the possibility of selling this one too,' [university president Robert] Barchi said. 'But like the others, it is our hope to be able to keep it on public display.'"
Thursday, April 05, 2007
No Deal (UPDATED 2X)
The Tennesse Attorney General has called off the proposed deal between Fisk University and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. The AP report is here. Here's the basic background. Short on cash, Fisk announced it was going to sell a couple of paintings from its Stieglitz Collection, including an O'Keeffe painting called “Radiator Building – Night, New York.” The O'Keeffe Museum challenged the sale on the grounds that it was a condition of the original gift that the collection not be broken up. The case was heading towards a trial when a settlement was announced in February: the museum would drop its objections to the sale of the two paintings, in return for which it would get to be the buyer of "Radiator Building" for a bargain price of $7 million. But the deal was put on hold for 30 days in order to give the university a chance to come up with an alternative plan for solving its financial problems that didn't involve losing the paintings. No such plan emerged, but Fisk did report to the Attorney General that it had received "one or more offers at or in excess of $20 million" for the painting. This apparently convinced the Attorney General that the $7 million price was too much of a bargain -- in effect, that Fisk was "paying" too much to settle the lawsuit -- and he withdrew his approval. This does not mean, as the headline of this piece mistakenly suggests, that Fisk has won "backing to ... sell O'Keeffe painting for top dollar." All it means is the case goes back to court, where, if the museum prevails, the university won't have the right to sell the paintings at all, thereby missing out on $7 million plus however many millions the other painting would have brought 0n the open market.
You can read the Attorney General's letter here. Lee Rosenbaum reports that the Chancery Court has set a trial date for July 18. Richard Lacayo floats some alternative settlement ideas. No word yet from the museum about their next move. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: The New York Times has a good summary this morning.
UPDATE 2: Jonathan Marx has a piece in today's Nashville Tennessean headlined "Fisk can get better deal, art pros say." Well, yes, of course it could get more for the painting than the museum was going to pay under the now-scuttled settlement -- but that's the whole point of a settlement. Each side gives something up. Marx writes that "several experts have suggested that if the museum truly wants the painting, it should be ready to pay what it's worth" -- but to say that is to say that the museum should get nothing in exchange for dropping its claim. The Attorney General's position seems to amount to saying it was fine for the museum to get the painting at a discount, just not too large a discount. But then why didn't they get an up to date appraisal before signing off on the deal initially? It was obvious to lots of people at the time that the two-year old appraisal that was used was badly outdated. It was no secret when this deal was reached that the O'Keeffe was a $20 million painting.
One other odd thing about the reaction to this latest news. If the work ends up selling on the open market, there's a chance it will end up going not to the O'Keeffe Museum but to, say, Bentonville, Arkansas or, even worse, "over the commode of some Russian kleptocrat." Is that really what people want?
You can read the Attorney General's letter here. Lee Rosenbaum reports that the Chancery Court has set a trial date for July 18. Richard Lacayo floats some alternative settlement ideas. No word yet from the museum about their next move. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: The New York Times has a good summary this morning.
UPDATE 2: Jonathan Marx has a piece in today's Nashville Tennessean headlined "Fisk can get better deal, art pros say." Well, yes, of course it could get more for the painting than the museum was going to pay under the now-scuttled settlement -- but that's the whole point of a settlement. Each side gives something up. Marx writes that "several experts have suggested that if the museum truly wants the painting, it should be ready to pay what it's worth" -- but to say that is to say that the museum should get nothing in exchange for dropping its claim. The Attorney General's position seems to amount to saying it was fine for the museum to get the painting at a discount, just not too large a discount. But then why didn't they get an up to date appraisal before signing off on the deal initially? It was obvious to lots of people at the time that the two-year old appraisal that was used was badly outdated. It was no secret when this deal was reached that the O'Keeffe was a $20 million painting.
One other odd thing about the reaction to this latest news. If the work ends up selling on the open market, there's a chance it will end up going not to the O'Keeffe Museum but to, say, Bentonville, Arkansas or, even worse, "over the commode of some Russian kleptocrat." Is that really what people want?
Ritts Gift
Geoff Edgers reports that the Herb Ritts Foundation is giving Boston's Museum of Fine Arts $2.5 million, and in return the museum is going to name a gallery after Ritts. The foundation is also giving the museum 189 Ritts photographs, making it the single largest holder of his work.
Disturbing
A 22-year old man with a history of mental illness put his foot through a $300,000 Old Master painting yesterday at the Milwaukee Art Museum because the image, of Goliath's severed head, "disturbed" him. The 1640 painting, "The Triumph of David" by Ottavio Vannini, was on loan to the museum from the Haukohl Family Collection. The director of the museum says its insurance company has been contacted and the painting will be examined by conservators to determine the best course of action. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has more here.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Too Late (UPDATED)
The New York Times reports this morning (second item, right below the bit about Keith Richard snorting his dad):
"The Detroit Institute of Arts has won the legal right to retain a disputed van Gogh painting after a federal district court judge ruled that a family asserting ownership had waited too long to file its claim .... A parallel case involving a Gauguin painting, brought by the same family against the Toledo Museum of Art, was dismissed by an Ohio judge in December. In the Detroit case, Martha Nathan, a member of a Jewish banking family that emigrated from Germany to France in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution, sold the van Gogh, 'Les Bêcheurs' ('The Diggers') to a consortium of three dealers in Paris in 1938 for $9,360. One of the dealers sold it in 1941 for $34,000 to Robert Tannahill, a Detroit art collector who bequeathed it to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1969. The Nathan family asserted its claim to the painting in 2004, but United States District Court Judge Denise Page Hood, citing the expiration of Michigan’s statute of limitations, dismissed the case."
More from the Detroit Free Press here. You can see the painting here. I posted on the Ohio decision here.
UPDATE: The Michigan decision is available here, courtesy of Terry Martin.
"The Detroit Institute of Arts has won the legal right to retain a disputed van Gogh painting after a federal district court judge ruled that a family asserting ownership had waited too long to file its claim .... A parallel case involving a Gauguin painting, brought by the same family against the Toledo Museum of Art, was dismissed by an Ohio judge in December. In the Detroit case, Martha Nathan, a member of a Jewish banking family that emigrated from Germany to France in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution, sold the van Gogh, 'Les Bêcheurs' ('The Diggers') to a consortium of three dealers in Paris in 1938 for $9,360. One of the dealers sold it in 1941 for $34,000 to Robert Tannahill, a Detroit art collector who bequeathed it to the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1969. The Nathan family asserted its claim to the painting in 2004, but United States District Court Judge Denise Page Hood, citing the expiration of Michigan’s statute of limitations, dismissed the case."
More from the Detroit Free Press here. You can see the painting here. I posted on the Ohio decision here.
UPDATE: The Michigan decision is available here, courtesy of Terry Martin.
The Residue of Design
Lee Rosenbaum notes that "sometimes deaccessioners get lucky: A work that belongs in the public domain stays in the public domain." She's talking about one the works just sold by the Albright-Knox Gallery -- an Indian sculpture of the Hindu god Shiva, which went for a little over $4 million to, it turns out, the Cleveland Museum. As Lee notes, it will now join that museum's "superlative Asian art collection, a mere 200 miles away from the sculpture's previous home." Lindsay Pollock reports for Bloomberg here. Steven Litt has a story in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer here.
Of course, on some proposals for how to deal with the deaccessioning issue, this wouldn't be a matter of luck at all.
Of course, on some proposals for how to deal with the deaccessioning issue, this wouldn't be a matter of luck at all.
Curiouser still! (UPDATED)
Geoff Edgers has the latest twist in the "Matter Pollocks" saga in today's Boston Globe. Alex Matter is denying a report in yesterday's New York Times that he sold some of the paintings to dealer Ronald Feldman; he says he's only promised to reimburse Feldman "for about $200,000 in expenses for insurance, conservation, and other costs" if the works ever sell.
Edgers also discusses the conflict over the report Matter commissioned from James Martin, a forensic scientist based in Williamstown. Matter has reportedly refused to authorize Martin to release the report on the grounds that it is incomplete. Martin, for his part, refuses to meet with Matter and his lawyer to discuss the report unless they first agree not to sue him. I assume the agreement by which Martin was engaged to do the study defines the conditions under which it may be released, and that Matter therefore may have the legal right to prevent its release, but it seems to me he and his team have a bigger problem to deal with. Clearly Martin wants to release the report, and clearly the Pollock-Krasner Foundation wants him to release the report (its lawyer is quoted as saying "The foundation does not believe the report is incomplete"). By appearing to be the only party who doesn't want it released, Matter creates an impression that the report is really damaging to his cause. He almost has to allow it to be released now, and figure out a way to diminish its impact.
Edgers also reports that the Pollock-Krasner Foundation plans to issue its own report on the paintings this summer, which I hadn't heard before.
UPDATE: Now Matter has retracted his denial. He tells Edgers that Feldman does own some of the works, either outright or partially. "How many pictures? How much of a stake? Matter says he doesn't know. The deal is verbal, with no contract." Frankly I think it's a mistake for Matter to continue to be evasive about this. It hurts his credibility, and needlessly -- did anyone really think there was no financial motive here?
Edgers also discusses the conflict over the report Matter commissioned from James Martin, a forensic scientist based in Williamstown. Matter has reportedly refused to authorize Martin to release the report on the grounds that it is incomplete. Martin, for his part, refuses to meet with Matter and his lawyer to discuss the report unless they first agree not to sue him. I assume the agreement by which Martin was engaged to do the study defines the conditions under which it may be released, and that Matter therefore may have the legal right to prevent its release, but it seems to me he and his team have a bigger problem to deal with. Clearly Martin wants to release the report, and clearly the Pollock-Krasner Foundation wants him to release the report (its lawyer is quoted as saying "The foundation does not believe the report is incomplete"). By appearing to be the only party who doesn't want it released, Matter creates an impression that the report is really damaging to his cause. He almost has to allow it to be released now, and figure out a way to diminish its impact.
Edgers also reports that the Pollock-Krasner Foundation plans to issue its own report on the paintings this summer, which I hadn't heard before.
UPDATE: Now Matter has retracted his denial. He tells Edgers that Feldman does own some of the works, either outright or partially. "How many pictures? How much of a stake? Matter says he doesn't know. The deal is verbal, with no contract." Frankly I think it's a mistake for Matter to continue to be evasive about this. It hurts his credibility, and needlessly -- did anyone really think there was no financial motive here?
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Munch Appeals
An appellate court ruling was announced late last week in the criminal case involving the 2004 theft from Oslo's Munch Museum. It's a little confusing (apparently in Norway you get a jury at the appellate court level), but MSNBC breaks it down:
"In May, the Oslo district court convicted three men of helping the armed robbers, and sentenced them to prison terms of between four and eight years. Three others were acquitted. After about eight hours of deliberation, a 10-member jury in the Borgarting appeals court upheld the conviction of [two men] for grand theft. It also convicted [a third man] of the same charge, reversing his acquittal in the Oslo district court last year. The jury upheld the acquittals of two other men, and acquitted a third who had been sentenced to four years in prison by the lower court."
David Nishamura says: "The sentences don't seem very long, but I think I'll still stick to legitimate employment."
"In May, the Oslo district court convicted three men of helping the armed robbers, and sentenced them to prison terms of between four and eight years. Three others were acquitted. After about eight hours of deliberation, a 10-member jury in the Borgarting appeals court upheld the conviction of [two men] for grand theft. It also convicted [a third man] of the same charge, reversing his acquittal in the Oslo district court last year. The jury upheld the acquittals of two other men, and acquitted a third who had been sentenced to four years in prison by the lower court."
David Nishamura says: "The sentences don't seem very long, but I think I'll still stick to legitimate employment."
I guess it's curiouser and curiouser
In today's New York Times, Randy Kennedy reports that Alex Matter has sold some of his disputed Pollocks to dealer Ronald Feldman. According to the story, Feldman bought some of the works outright and shares ownership of others with Matter. It isn't clear from the story exactly when the sales took place, only that it was sometime before January 2006. Lee Rosenbaum pronounces the story "curiouser and curiouser." Richard Lacayo, on the other hand, says it's "curiouser and curiouser."
Lacayo also says the "important implication [is] that there is now real financial incentive, at least for some people, to legitimize the Matter discoveries as Pollocks" and wonders whether the news "means that [Feldman] knows something we don't, or merely that the art market has become even more irrational than usual." On the latter point, the sale may or may not have been so irrational, depending on the price. The works are said to be worth $40 million or more if authentic. Would it be irrational to pay, say, 10 cents on the dollar on the chance the works are ultimately accepted as genuine Pollocks? Would it have been irrational to do so before the results of the recent Harvard study cast doubt on them?
Lacayo also says the "important implication [is] that there is now real financial incentive, at least for some people, to legitimize the Matter discoveries as Pollocks" and wonders whether the news "means that [Feldman] knows something we don't, or merely that the art market has become even more irrational than usual." On the latter point, the sale may or may not have been so irrational, depending on the price. The works are said to be worth $40 million or more if authentic. Would it be irrational to pay, say, 10 cents on the dollar on the chance the works are ultimately accepted as genuine Pollocks? Would it have been irrational to do so before the results of the recent Harvard study cast doubt on them?
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