Jail Time for Nahmad

A year and a day.

"I think I could really teach young people in a good way and hopefully introduce them to a world they might otherwise never visit."

The New York Times:  Art Dealer Seeks to Avoid Prison.

Is inequality good for art?

From Tyler Cowen's review of Piketty:

"Piketty fears the stasis and sluggishness of the rentier, but what might appear to be static blocks of wealth have done a great deal to boost dynamic productivity. Piketty’s own book was published by the Belknap Press imprint of Harvard University Press, which received its initial funding in the form of a 1949 bequest from Waldron Phoenix Belknap, Jr., an architect and art historian who inherited a good deal of money from his father, a vice president of Bankers Trust. (The imprint’s funds were later supplemented by a grant from Belknap’s mother.) And consider Piketty’s native France, where the scores of artists who relied on bequests or family support to further their careers included painters such as Corot, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Monet, and Toulouse-Lautrec and writers such as Baudelaire, Flaubert, Verlaine, and Proust, among others."

It's "disgusting people are allowed to go around displaying art on walls without getting permission."

Says Banksy.

An International Perspective

My friend Massimo Sterpi has co-edited a new title, The Art Collecting Legal Handbook.  Check it out.

"Protecting collectors, it's not our job. I don't think putting the burden of that due diligence on an artist estate, especially in the absence of sufficient legal protections, is appropriate."

That's Michael Straus, chairman of the Warhol foundation, making good sense in this Wall Street Journal piece on "the deep freeze in art authentication."

"Looks like another Visual Artists Rights Act lawsuit in the city that loves its murals."

Via Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento.

"The question now is whether the old cases upholding the poison pill will still apply in the case of activism."

"This is the fundamental question in the Sotheby’s case."

Good piece from Steven Davidoff in the Times a few days ago on the broader significance of the Daniel Loeb lawsuit.

"The show marks a victory lap for the artist and the gallery."

Dan Duray on the upcoming Richard Prince Canal Zone show at Gagosian.

"Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the charges 'paint a picture of perpetual lies and greed.'"

Indictment unsealed in the Knoedler-Rosales case.

Another arrest in the Knoedler case

Spanish art dealer Jose Carlos Bergantiños Diaz, Glafira Rosales's boyfriend.  Rosales plead guilty in September and "has been cooperating with the federal authorities."

Is copyright out of control?

Alex Tabarrok thinks so.

Piketty and the Art Market

"Although art is one of the few subjects not mentioned in the index of Mr. Piketty’s 685-page opus, it is worth considering how the unprecedented amounts of money the wealthy have recently been spending on trophy artworks might be a natural extension of his argument."

"A Bankruptcy Court meeting of creditors is set for April 29 in Los Angeles."

The LA Times has some details regarding the Perry Rubenstein Gallery bankruptcy filing.

"The artist is outside the state, the buyer's outside state, the property's outside the state."

It's always risky to read too much into oral arguments, but things did not seem to go well for the plaintiffs in the Ninth Circuit in the California resale royalty case.  Courthouse News Service has a summary here.  You can listen for yourself here.

The AAMD might be forced -- with regret -- to sanction the hell out of the Delaware Art Museum

What choice do they have, really?

It's not as if it was "a difficult -- indeed, agonizing -- decision" on the part of the museum, a problem that "does not admit of easy solutions."  Where'd you ever get that idea?

"The latest deal — which comes after separate accords with two global banks and unsecured bondholders — could hasten the city’s emergence from bankruptcy and speed the city’s plans to reinvest in services."

Getting close in Detroit.

"The tax strategy is 100 percent legal, experts say, as long as all stages of the museum transfer are handled correctly."

There was a terrific piece by Graham Bowley and Patricia Cohen in the Times over the weekend on a "lucrative, little-known" maneuver for avoiding state use taxes on art.

Doesn't work in New York -- as the story notes, "collectors who live in states that don’t recognize a first-use exemption are out of luck. New York, for example, typically imposes a use tax — 8.875 percent in Manhattan — on art brought into the state by a resident, even if it is first publicly displayed elsewhere" -- but well worth reading.

"According to court documents filed Wednesday, investors are willing to pay or make loans of close to $2 billion for the masterpieces inside the Detroit Institute of Arts" (UPDATED)

Emergency manager Kevyn Orr says it isn't going to happen -- he says "we have no intention of selling art" and also correctly points out that "in a Chapter 9 [bankruptcy] you cannot compel the city to sell anything, not a park, not a zoo, not the DIA."

But here's a question:  at what point would such an offer become not disgusting?  Ten billion? Twenty billion?  Is there literally no amount of money where we would have to say "you know what, the money could do more for the city than the art"?

UPDATE:  Michael Rushton tweets:  "Detroit's violence, failed schools, decrepit public services, poverty: disgusting. Arts 'advocates' need perspective."

Shades of grey (UPDATED)

Let me recommend this really good piece on the situation in Delaware, by Timothy Rub of the AAMD.

Instead of the usual approach of this-is-an-easy-question-and-anyone-who-disagrees-is-a-repulsive-Stalinist-philistine-hater-of-art, he begins be acknowledging that "this was a difficult -- indeed, agonizing -- decision."

That alone seems to me to be a huge concession from the usual AAMD position on these things.

He goes on:  "Was it, however, the right decision?"  Some, he says, "accepting the argument that the only alternative was to close the Museum's doors, would agree that it was."  Others would "emphatically" disagree.

Again, a rare concession that there are two sides to this debate.

He asks whether there were "other options that the [Museum] might have explored?"  He says the answer is yes, though doesn't bother to "map these out" -- though the important point, to my mind, is that in doing so he concedes that "such problems do not admit of easy solutions."

He closes by saying that "whatever your opinion on this subject may be, I hope that you'll agree that it is worthy of a spirited public debate."  (I do!  I do!)

This seems to me exactly how these things should be discussed:

First, no one gets to shut down the debate by appealing to some magical "ethics" rules.

The question is always:  was it the right decision in the circumstances?

What will happen if the work isn't sold?

Have all other options been sufficiently explored?

Is it, all things considered, the right thing to do?

It's very similar to how people think about deaccessioning in cases where the sales proceeds are used to buy more art.  Sometimes it seems to make a lot of sense.   Sometimes it doesn't.   But the important thing is that each case is considered on its own merits.  There is no bright line rule.   Nobody gets sanctioned.

If that's the AAMD's new approach to the problem, sign me up.

UPDATE:  Here is a timely overview of deaccessioning issues from Charles and Tom Danziger.