Digital Archives: Navigating the Legal Shoals Symposium

Digital Archives:
Navigating the Legal Shoals

Columbia Law School
Friday, April 16, 2010

Presented in conjunction with the Rockefeller Archive Center

FREE for law students if you register by APRIL 2! (http://www.law.columbia.edu/kernochan/symposia/digital-archives)

On Friday, April 16, 2010, Columbia Law School’s Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts will host a day-long symposium on the legal issues that can arise in digitizing archives and making them publicly available online.

Archives and library special collections are repositories of cultural history. They may consist of the writings and correspondence of a particular individual or the records and collections of an organization. They may focus on a specific category of works – e.g. manuscripts, video or sound recordings, photographs, or advertisements and other “ephemera” – or they may embrace a wide range of different types of works. But most archives share a common goal: the desire to take advantage of the internet to make their holdings more easily accessible to scholars around the world.

This symposium – directed to lawyers, archivists, librarians and educators – will focus on legal hurdles facing archives in digitizing existing works (and in collecting “born digital” materials) and making them publicly available over the internet. Leading academics, archivists and legal professionals will address a range of issues, including

Canada dumping ground for stolen art

"Art thieves and black market dealers in cultural heritage material have a better chance of unloading their valuable booty — and avoiding prosecution — in Canada than almost anywhere else, say two prominent stolen art experts.

"It's impossible to know just how much art is stolen and resold in Canada because there's virtually no one keeping track of it," award-winning arts writer and investigative journalist Joshua Knelman said Friday, commenting on the recovery this week of two major pieces — a Henry Moore sculpture and a Paul Klee painting — by canny gallery owners in Toronto and Montreal respectively.

"There are no specialist art theft investigators in the Toronto police force, and none in the OPP or the RCMP.

"If I had a piece of stolen art worth less than $100,000 — objects of greater value tend to attract more scrutiny — Canada is an excellent place to slip it back into the market."

Victims of art theft in Canada have few resources to help them find stolen property, said Knelman, who is writing a book on the international cultural black market, Hot Art, to be published soon by Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Shuster U.S.

...

"In Canada, most of the policing is done by diligent gallery and auction-house owners who check items offered for sale with the ALR.

"Detection in this unregulated system seems to rely almost entirely on the honesty and integrity of local dealers and brokers.

"Even so, it's often very difficult to lay charges because it's rare that the seller is the actual thief. Stolen art usually changes hands many times, or it's handed down and part of an inheritance.

"No arrests is the norm in Canada."

ASTRID LANGE AND RICK SZNAJDER

For more see: Greg Quill Thestar.com ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Case Against a Museum

"The Art of the Steal", Dir. Don Argott, 2009

On Wednesday night the Art Law Society took a trip to see "The Art of the Steal" at the Independent Film Center. "The Art of the Steal" is a compelling documentary that chronicles the half-century long battle over the rights to the Barnes art collection. The struggle highlights the tension between ensuring accessibility to art and preserving the ideals of art.

Albert C. Barnes didn’t want his carefully selected and arranged art collection to go the way of a “shopping mall experience” in some museum. Barnes had maintained his collection in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, removed from the city center. He restricted access to the works, making them available only to students of art and serious observers. Powerful organizations urged Barnes to open up the collection and to make the works available for public viewing. Barnes adamantly refused. Although he was an elitist and a misanthrope, he certainly had good taste. His selected works are estimated to have a value of $25 million.

Despite Barnes’ last wishes, a gallery for the collection is being built along the Philadelphia parkway. Is the move necessary? Will the new gallery uphold Barnes' vision? Does Barnes’ vision even matter? Perhaps these questions can only be answered when the gallery is opened to the public in 2012.

Access Restricted: “A New Era in Sentencing?”

Upcoming VLA event: Wednesday March 31, 2010 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Guest speaker Douglas Berman, co-author of a leading casebook, Sentencing Law and Policy and managing editor of the Federal Sentencing Reporter and the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, will present various alternatives to sentencing guidelines from within a landmarked centerpiece of New York’s trial courthouses.

This presentation is part of Access Restricted: Law & Representation, a series of lectures that take place around Manhattan. On March 10, 2010, one of the lectures in the series was given at the Cardozo School of Law. The aim of the series is to "foster new perspectives by encouraging the public to explore locales and situations through the various lenses of architecture and planning, art, history, sociology, political science, and law."

Get involved! (And it's free).

New York County Supreme Court, 60 Centre Street

RSVP here: http://www.lmcc.net/calendar/event/access_restricted_a_new_era_in_sentencing

Review of "Reality Hunger" by David Shields in NYT

Copyright of ideas and text -- taking on the system.

"In his deliberately provocative — and deeply nihilistic — new book, “Reality Hunger,” the onetime novelist David Shields asserts that fiction “has never seemed less central to the culture’s sense of itself.” He says he’s “bored by out-and-out fabrication, by myself and others; bored by invented plots and invented characters” and much more interested in confession and “reality-based art.” His own book can be taken as Exhibit A in what he calls “recombinant” or appropriation art."

Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/21mash.html?src=me&ref=homepage

Google, trade marks, and European Court of Justice

"PARIS—The European Union's highest court ruled Tuesday that Google Inc. has the right to sell ads linked to the Louis Vuitton name and other famous brands, a landmark judgment that clears search engines of trademark liability in Europe and protects a crucial revenue stream.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that Google is not liable for trademark infringement when it sells ads linked to keyword searches for a brand to one of the brand's competitors.

The court argued that the search giant is merely a host for ads, and turned down a lawsuit brought by luxury-goods group LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA. The court concluded that it is an advertiser's responsibility to make clear if the product it is selling is different from the brand keyword typed in by the consumer."

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704896104575139132778398608.html?mod=WSJ_Small%20Business_IndustryNews

EVENT REMINDER! Brown Bag Lunch: Theft of Ideas with Monica Pa

When: Wednesday, March 24, 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.
Where: 9 Sem

Access Restricted @ Cardozo on March 10, 2010

On March 10, 2010, Cardozo Art Law Society, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts & Lower Manhattan Cultural Council hosted a mock lecture based on "No Country for Old Men."

Talking Business -- Art Business

On March 15, Cardozo hosted a panel entitled The Art Market Examined – Art, Business, and Law: What do they have in common? with Tracy Nolder, Director, David Zwirner Gallery,

Frank Lord, Associate, Herrick Feinstein LLP, Edward A. McGorry, U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. We discussed the primary and secondary art markets and what art advisers, attorneys and gallery owners can do to help their clients.
Holding: This market favors symbiosis; collaboration between museums, galleries and auction houses benefits artists and collectors.

20 yrs later -- a story worthy of Dumas -- Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist

Reducing Art Theft and Other Risks

"Often, cultural property is housed in buildings that are recognized as architectural masterpieces; therefore, they carry a certain significance, or universal value. Typically, an edifice, which complements the natural landscape, is protected, designated, listed, or registered. In exchange for access to public grants and funding, there are restrictions imposed on the site in order to preserve it for posterity. Unfortunately, this creates barriers, which limit, or even prevent, the renovation and refurbishment of a preexisting site. To a certain degree this can add to the mystique of an historical landmark as a symbol of an empire's - or colony's - former glory. When a listed building, such as the Tate Britain, needs to upgrade or modernize its facilities for whatever the reason (safety regulations/standards, security, etc.), it must first gain the approval of English Heritage's governing body. As Dennis Ahern, who serves as head of security and safety at the Tate Galleries, will tell you, even performing a simple function, such as repositioning a security camera, can be a tedious and consuming process.

In light of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft's 20th anniversary being just a week away, Art Theft Central thought it would be appropriate to incorporate the museum in discussions related to the flexibility of altering such celebrated spaces and the implications it can have on museum security. After hurdling the rigidities imposed on the museum in Gardner's will, the museum went ahead with a proposed $118 million expansion."

from Art Theft Central by mark@artcrime.info (Mark)

Where can future lawyers meet with artists? Check out the new space at the Lincoln Center.

The David Rubenstein Atrium, located on Broadway between 62nd and 63rd streets, is the Upper West Side’s hottest new spot for students to study, grab a bite to eat with friends or get a great deal on day-of discount tickets to Lincoln Center performances. Open 7 days a week, 365 days a year, this cultural and urban oasis features a variety of services, activities, and amenities geared toward students and their budgets.

http://new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/atrium

Estate Plannig and "an Art GRAT"?

Estate Planning: Is it Time for an Art GRAT? by Michael Arlein

Disappointing as the economic downturn has been, it may present an estate planning opportunity for many art collectors. The depressed value of art means that outright gifts generate less gift tax than they would in a stronger economy, so for collectors who believe the economy will recover this may be an optimum time to give works of art outright to friends and family. By the same token, an art collector who believes his collection will recover its value at an annual rate greater than the prevailing IRS discount rate (ranging from 2.8% to 3.4% this summer) has an opportunity to create a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust (or "GRAT"), which is designed to shift part of the anticipated increase in value to friends or family without incurring any gift tax at all. With a Federal gift and estate tax rate of 45% and state transfer taxes on top of that in some states (including New York), a savvy collector who plans his giving thoughtfully may be able to realize substantial economic benefits right now.

Source: http://www.pbwt.com/resources/publications/legal-canvas-summer-2009/

How Investment Helped the Art Market Weather the World Economic Crisis

A change in luxury spending habits caused by the recession has helped the international art and antiques market weather the global economic storm, reveals a new report commissioned by The European Fine Art Foundation which organizes The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) to be held in the Dutch city of Maastricht in the MECC (Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Centre) from 12-21 March 2010. The report The International Art Market 2007-2009, Trends in the Art Trade during Global Recession has been prepared by Dr Clare McAndrew, a cultural economist specialising in the fine and decorative art market and founder of Arts Economics. - March 2, 2010 -- http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36586&int_modo=1

Sotheby's Announces 2009 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results

"Despite a 7% decrease in net auction sales, Sotheby’s reported a substantial improvement in fourth quarter 2009 earnings over the prior year fourth quarter. Net income for the fourth quarter of 2009 is the second highest in Company history at $73.6 million, or $1.09 per share, compared to a net loss of ($9.3) million, or ($0.14) per share, for the prior period. This significant improvement in profitability is especially attributable to a $52.1 million, or 31%, increase in operating revenues from the prior period. - March, 2010. http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=36587

Louis Vuitton v. Takashi Murakami

"They may not have realized it, but the folks who snapped up as much as $4-million worth of limited-edition prints by artist Takashi Murakami two years ago at the special Louis Vuitton boutique inside his exhibition at L.A.'s Museum of Contemporary Art apparently were getting nicely mounted handbags -- minus the snaps and straps."

Read all (SOME) about it: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-vuitton23-2009apr23,0,6238759.story

Congratulations to the Art Law Society's Moot Court Team!

Congratulations to Josh Wolkoff, Kiko White, and Stephanie Spangler for proceeding to the Quarterfinals in the First Annual Cultural Heritage Law Moot Court Competition at Depaul Law School in Chicago. A special thanks to the team's coach Lucille Roussin for her guidance and support.

See http://www.law.depaul.edu/chmoot/default.asp for information regarding the competition.

Live Nude Art!

Brian Reed's recent exhibition entitled "Through the Heart of It All" featured a living, breathing nude woman (who, oddly enough, also happens to be my high school classmate with whom I lost touch a decade ago-life is full of surprises) standing in the window of Chair and the Maiden Gallery in the West Village.

As the Times writes, in 2000 the Supreme Court ruled under the First Amendment in favor of a nude New York photo shoot, paving the way for present day artists such as Brian Reed.

The New York Times, L Magazine and other publications who covered the exhibitions all remarked on the generally ho-hum public response to something that a mere generation ago would have potentially sparked outrage (you can see the NYTimes article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/26/nyregion/26naked.html and L Mag: http://www.thelmagazine.com/TheMeasure/archives/2010/02/26/nudity-in-art-still-sort-of-shocking-kinda).

It's interesting to note how Supreme Court rulings can, in the course of a mere decade, have (or, at the very least, contribute to) such a substantial impact on both public mores and general consensus on what constitutes art.

What's a Law Student to Do?

For a story of one J.D. going to Cambodia to work with Heritage Watch, please read
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/dateline/2010/02/cambodia-preserving-cultural-heritage.php

Excerpt:

"After my first year of law school, I spent a month in Phnom Penh, Cambodia with Heritage Watch, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Cambodian cultural heritage sites and fostering sustainable development. As an intern, my job was to synthesize relevant laws and other legal documents into a database that could be easily accessed by those needing to know the rules governing the use of cultural property from Cambodia. My goal going into the project was to assess how Cambodia's growing problem with cultural heritage preservation could benefit from a coherent legal approach. . . ."