Fisk Delay?

The AP reports that the Tennessee attorney general has asked Chancellor Lyle to delay the February trial to determine whether Fisk University can go ahead with its proposed deal with the Crystal Bridges Museum: "The request ... asks [Lyle] to push the trial back to late June due to a proposal by Fisk to raise funds from federal and private sources."

Law in Art

Bloomberg's James Russell reviews Rafael Vinoly's new courthouse in the Bronx.

Widening (UPDATED)

From today's Los Angeles Times:

"A federal investigation into looted Asian antiquities at Southland museums has broadened to include a prominent Chicago industrialist and art collector who purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of allegedly stolen artifacts from a Cerritos arts dealer. On Thursday, the same day federal agents raided four Southern California museums suspected of displaying stolen art, authorities also searched the private museum of Barry MacLean, a trustee of the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago. The newly revealed allegations have significantly raised the stakes of the ongoing investigation, suggesting that a suspected network of illegal art dealers extended far beyond Southern California and included objects far more valuable than those previously revealed."

UPDATE: More from Richard Lacayo and Lee Rosenbaum, who says the story "keeps getting worse."

Archives Theft

The New York Times has a story today on a longtime employee at the New York State Archives in Albany who has been charged with stealing and selling rare books and documents from the state’s collections since 2002. He reportedly confessed to taking "more than 300 or 400 items in 2007 alone," selling them on eBay and at trade shows.

David Nishimura makes an interesting point: "eBay has become thieves' best friend and their worst enemy -- not due to any initiative on eBay's part, but rather because how it empowers investigators, official and unofficial."

Theft-to-order

A suspect in last month's theft of two paintings from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art has told investigators that the paintings were destined for a Saudi collector. AP story here.

Today's Salander News

Philip Boroff has the latest:

"RFR Realty LLC, controlled by developer and art collector Aby Rosen, has asked [the Salander] bankruptcy judge to give it possession of the 1922 neo-Italian Renaissance mansion that Salander-O'Reilly leases. In court papers, RFR said the gallery's late rent payments triggered the landlord's option to terminate the lease. RFR also seeks immediate payment of $795,698 in rent that it says has accrued since Salander- O'Reilly filed for bankruptcy protection in November. Joseph Sarachek, the chief restructuring officer that Salander-O'Reilly hired in November, said the gallery will contest the motion."

Jewelry Suit

Josh Baer reports:

"Barber Bros Jewelry filed suit this week against Sotheby’s for $800,000 alleging negligence for the loss of their jewelry."

MFA Suit

I recently took note of the beginnings of a trend whereby museums and other institutions were going on offense and seeking declaratory judgments against potential restitution claimants, rather than sitting around waiting to be sued. Today's New York Times has the latest example:

"The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has turned to the courts to validate its claim to a 1913 Oskar Kokoschka painting sought by Claudia Seger-Thomschitz, an Austrian woman who says it was sold under duress during the Nazi occupation of Austria .... Lawyers for Ms. Seger-Thomschitz contend that there is no doubt that the Kokoschka painting, 'Two Nudes (Lovers),' was sold under duress by Oskar Reichel, a physician who ran an art gallery in Vienna. The Museum of Fine Arts, citing months of research, maintained that the sale in 1939 was voluntary and to another Jew, the Viennese art dealer Otto Kallir."

JL from Modern Kicks comments: "Obviously one wants to know more before deciding definitively, but forced sales are often a tricky thing to determine, and they are not the same as sales stemming from a tragic situation. One might say that the owner was forced by circumstances to do something, but to consider that to rise to the level of what typically has been understood as a forced sale would expand the range of potential claims in a way that I don't believe has previously been accepted or, in my view, should be accepted. That doesn't mean it's a happy situation, but at some point there are limits."

"Confirming our suspicion that there is a bit of art in law . . ."

Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento points to this law.com article on the ins and outs of redacting documents in pretrial discovery.

More on 475 Kent

From Ed Winkleman.

Complicity

In my post yesterday on the California antiquities raids, I mentioned a quote from Lee Rosenbaum: "This may well turn out to be an ART-MARKET scandal, but the degree of intentional complicity by MUSEUMS in this mess is not yet known."

Well, today's New York Times has a story headlined "Museum Workers are Called Complicit," which says: "Affidavits related to search warrants executed at four Southern California museums on Thursday say that staff members at two of the four museums worked closely with the main targets of the investigation, visiting a storage locker maintained by a smuggler of stolen antiquities and meeting with the sellers of stolen goods — even while acknowledging that the artifacts headed for the museums might be tainted."

More Museum Raid

Tons more coverage of yesterday's raid on four California museums. Here is the Los Angeles Times. The New York Times is here. Newsweek is here. The Orange County Register talks to "the man identified as 'the smuggler'" in the investigation.

Lee Rosenbaum cautions that "the degree of intentional complicity by museums in this mess is not yet known."

It's indeed early, but Derek Fincham starts drawing some lessons:

"First, the alleged objects were of limited value. These aren't comparable to the Euphronios Krater for example. They are smaller objects, but were bought and sold in greater quantities. ...

"Second, I think this is compelling evidence of a systemic problem with the antiquities trade. ... The lack of provenance, and the ease with which smugglers can elude customs agents makes policing the trade difficult. However, it would seem now that those who would buy and sell objects can no longer afford to cut corners, and must now conduct far more detailed investigations into how objects came to market.

"Finally, I think this investigation reminds us that Roman and Greek objects are not the only classes of antiquities that are smuggled, despite the attention the recent returns from US institutions have indicated. Clearly, the question now is how many indictments or convictions will ensue, and how will the individual art institutions and the relevant industry codes of practice evolve to prevent this kind of criminal activity in the future."

"A glimpse of the daily struggle in New York to keep space available for artists"

I've been meaning to mention the goings-on at 475 Kent Ave. in Williamsburg, where a number of artists were "evacuated" earlier this week by city officials over fire safety concerns involving an unauthorized matzo bakery in the basement. The New York Times had a story here. More here from The Brooklyn Paper.

Richard Lacayo discussed the story at his blog today, and also has a piece in the current issue of TIME magazine's international edition on "the exceptionally large arts-related base of the New York City economy," which is well worth reading in its entirety.

Museums Raided

From the Los Angeles Times:

"Federal agents carried out coordinated raids on four Southern California museums and a Los Angeles art gallery early today, the first public move in a five-year investigation of an alleged smuggling pipeline that authorities say funneled looted Southeast Asian and Native American artifacts into local museums. Shortly after 7:30 a.m., search warrants were served on the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pasadena's Pacific Asia Museum, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego. The warrants gave agents broad authority to search the museums' galleries, offices, storage areas and computer archives for objects and records related to the primary targets of the investigation: an alleged art smuggler, Robert Olson, and the owner of a Los Angeles Asian art gallery, Jonathan Markell. Markell's Silk Roads Gallery on La Brea Avenue was also raided."

Derek Fincham of the Illicit Cultural Property Blog says "this could be the first major antiquities prosecution in the United States since the conviction of antiquities dealer Fred Schultz. It goes without saying though that this kind of massive investigation is unprecedented."

JL at Modern Kicks has a one word reaction: "Wow."

Richard Lacayo sees this as the "money quote": "The alleged crimes described in the warrants continued amid and after the Getty scandal became public, suggesting some American museums have not changed collecting habits known to be illegal or at least questionable. The new allegations could also carry much more serious consequences for those implicated because they are being investigated by U.S. authorities on American soil."

"Now, artist Michael Hermesh is being compensated for the rough handling of Frank and his baggage"

From the CBC: "The City of Penticton will have to pay $14,000 in damages to the creator of Frank the Baggage Handler, a contentious local statue that drew international headlines after vandals repeatedly damaged its male genitalia."

You can see Frank here.

Pyramid Scheme

National Geographic News has more on Egypt's plans to bring a number of antiquities, including the Pyramids, under copyright protection. The article includes the following from Bill Patry:

"'You can do it within your own borders if your own laws permit you to do it,' Patry said of copyrighting property thousands of years old. 'But it's pretty unlikely that it's going to be enforced in other countries. Copyright is a pretty territorial thing.'"

I had a similar reaction here ("the real issue is going to be enforcement: it's hard to imagine other countries (including the US) enforcing the law for acts that occur outside of Egypt").

Stay tuned.

More Theft Fallout

Looks like the Sao Paulo Museum of Art might be temporarily closed in the wake of last month's high-profile robbery:

"[S]tate authorities have filed a court request calling for the museum to be shut down because it has been operating over the past 40 years without formal permission from the city, police and fire services. 'There is an imminent risk to the life and health of museum visitors, as well as to the priceless historic and cultural heritage that the institution's collection represents,' a state official in charge of health and safety ... said.

"...Earlier this month police recovered Portrait of Suzanne Bloch by Pablo Picasso and The Coffee Worker by Brazil's Candido Portinari, which were stolen in a brazen robbery just before Christmas. Both works are back on display, but the robbery revealed the lack of security at the museum as well as the lack of insurance. An inspection of the building by city officials, a consequence of the robbery, showed the fire system was not operating, extinguishers were missing and exits were not clearly marked.

"... [O]n Dec. 20, a gang of thieves, using only a car jack and a crowbar, broke into the building and stole the two paintings, reportedly worth more than $50 million US in total. The building has no alarm and was relying on unarmed guards who patrol inside 24 hours a day."

"To burn or not to burn?"

Here's a real life example of the right-to-destroy issue discussed a while back here, here, and here. "It's the question of whether the last unpublished work of Vladimir Nabokov, which is now reposing unread in a Swiss bank vault, should be destroyed—as Nabokov explicitly requested before he died." Ron Rosenbaum has the details in Slate.

Norm Geras wonders: "Could [Nabokov] have spared his son this problem by destroying the work himself before he died? For how long, if for any time at all, did he know he was dying? If he could have destroyed it himself and didn't, does that tell us anything about how resolutely set he was on having it destroyed?"

"The company’s main selling point is the licensing of high-quality images from professional photographers around the world"

From today's New York Times:

"Getty Images, the world’s biggest supplier of pictures and video to media and advertising companies, has put itself on the auction block and could fetch more than $1.5 billion …. Final bids are due by the end of the month …. Getty, founded in 1995 …, has grown through a series of acquisitions into a go-to source for visual media ...."

"A great step forward"

Jason Kottke gives thumb's up to the Library of Congress's new Flickr program: "The LoC's extensive online image repository has always been exceedingly difficult to use so making images available on the easy-to-use Flickr is a great step forward."