T&E Gift: Family divided over an art loan and museum plans

French-born American artist, Armand Pierre Fernandez (1928–2005), known as Arman, was an influential 20th century sculptor.  His widow, Corice Arman, wishes to open a a museum in the south of France devoted to his work, what could be less contradictory than that? Well, the plans to open the museum are in jeopardy because the sculptor’s daughter and sister have objections.

“It’s public knowledge that the estate has not been settled,” says Marion Moreau, the artist's eldest daughter. And yet, Corice Arman lent some work or works to the Musee d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain in Niece. Needles to say, the loan is also opposed.

Looking to more art law in the new year, a court hearing is expected early 2012 to rule on the contested testamentary document that names Corice Arman as the heir to Arman’s estate. [Gift for T&E attorneys - check.]

Source: The Art Newspaper.

Intl Law Gift: Israeli museum refuses to return WWII spoils

Dutch News reported that the Israel Museum in Jerusalem is refusing to return a Tora cover stolen by the Nazis during World War II to the Jewish community in Leiden, Netherlands. According to the report, the 17th century cover for religious scrolls has been at the centre of a dispute over ownership for years and the Leiden community now hope the Dutch government will get involved, the paper says.

The Tora mantle had been given on loan to the Jewish Historical Museum in 1936; it was stolen by the Nazis during the occupation. The Israel Museum admitted receiving the cover from the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction, an organization established in 1947 to deal with the collection and redistribution of unclaimed Jewish cultural property.

It took about sixty years to force the Museum to produce a list of over 700 items that ended up in the museum by way of the Jewish Cultural Reconstruction.

Source: Dutch News.

Warhol Foundation Urges Protection for Appropriation Art as Experts Debate

Earlier this month, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts submitted a brief urging New York federal appeals court to reverse the holding in Cariou v. Prince, 784 F.Supp.2d 337 (2011) (ruling that thirty some paintings by Richard Prince have infringed copyrights in photographs owned by Patrick Cariou). The decision created confusing in art circles and rekindled the debate on what artists may and may not do when they take works of other artists for their own creative purposes.

To review, the decision, handed down earlier this year, found that Prince infringed Cariou's rights when he appropriation images from Cariou’s book “Yes, Rasta” for his Canal Zone series. The use was not protected by the "fair use doctrine" of the Copyright Act. Subsequently, Prince's works were seized, and now they are at Cariou's mercy, subject to potential destruction.

In the report released by the Warhol Foundation, the Warhol Foundation’s Chair, said “the position of the Foundation is that the District Court gravely misconstrued that doctrine and in so doing not only jeopardized the status of existing works by a range of artists but also created such uncertainty in the field as to cause a chilling effect on the creation of new works.” 

Some of the contributor’s to the brief, including Virginia Rutledge, an art historian and attorney based in New York, and Anthony T. Falzone, Executive Director of the Fair Use Project and counsel for the Foundation, participated in a lively discussion at the New York City Bar Association on December 13, 2011, on the panel “What We Talk About When We Talk about Appropriation: Contemporary Art After Cariou v. Prince.” Elsewhere, Falzone has been quoted as saying “The fair use doctrine is the most important tool courts have to ensure that copyright does not choke the creativity it is supposed to foster. Artists should not have to hire a lawyer to make art, and we’re suggesting an approach that provides clearer protection for the free expression interests of artists and the public.”

A PDF version of the Warhol Foundation’s brief is available here.

Reviews of the City Bar panel in Art In America; ArtNet.

Everybody is a Critic but Scrapping Decisions Better Made by Artists and Collectors

Christopher A. Marinello, Executive Director & General Counsel at the Art Loss Register and Jerome Hasler, Student at the Courtauld Institute and Intern at The Art Loss Register have written about the rise in the value of metal prices that accelerates loss of public sculptures.

Here is an excerpt: "Every morning on their way to the Notting Hill tube, many run into (sometimes literally) Nadim Karam's "Carnival Elephant," a metal elephant that idly evokes the movement of people around it with its gently revolving fan, spinning in unison with the whirlwind of activity at the Newcombe Piazza. One week, however, the fan was not moving: Some rascal had indiscriminately broken off one of the blades. The stasis caused many to wonder how and when the watchful elephant would be repaired, following the unholy act of animal cruelty visited upon it.

At the Art Loss Register (ALR), contemporary sculpture damage and theft reports have been rising for years, often in correlation with the increased value of the raw materials involved. In recent times, copper alone has seen an exponential rise in price, trading at over $8,500 per ton in August of this year, with gold, brass and lead also seeing increases of almost 20% in 2011 alone. It seems that, during each economic downturn, thieves target increasingly more ignoble sources of quick cash, with public sculpture, cemeteries and even church roofs bearing the brunt of their greed."

Barbara Hepworth's work stolen.
The full article is available here.

Homeland Security IDs Greek Cultural Property for Import Restrictions

On December 1, 2011, Federal Register published the final rule on import restrictions imposed on Certain Archaeological and Ethnological Materials from Greece. The report was approved by the commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under the Department of Homeland Security and the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Treasury.

The Designated List of Material Encompassed in Import Restrictions includes, for example, archaeological material from many periods, styles, and cultures (Upper Paleolithic, Neolithic, Minoan, Cycladic, Helladic, Mycenaean, Submycenaean, Geometric, Orientalizing, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine). It also explains what types of items are suspect -- stone sculptures, monuments, reliefs, furniture, vessels, tools and weapons, seals and beads; metal sculpture, personal ornaments, vessels and coins; various ceramics; items made of bone, ivory, glass, textiles, papyrus and others.

From the summary of the rule: "This final rule amends the existing U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) regulations to reflect the imposition of import restrictions on certain archaeological and ethnological material from the Hellenic Republic (Greece). New restrictions were imposed pursuant to the July 17, 2011 agreement between the United States and Greece that has been entered into under the authority of the Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act (CCPIA) in accordance with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The final rule amends CBP regulations by adding Greece to the list of countries for which a bilateral agreement has been entered into for imposing cultural property import restrictions. The final rule also contains the designated list that describes the types of archaeological and ethnological articles to which the restrictions apply."

For the full report, its background, determinations and the list of articles covered by the new restrictions access here.

More information on import restrictions can be found on the International Cultural Property Protection Web site (http://exchanges.state.gov/heritage/culprop.html).


PS On Nov. 30, 2011, Cardozo Art Law Society hosted Michael McCullough, solo practitioner specializing in customs law. His presentation on import and export restrictions for works of art and cultural property laid a solid foundation for this CBP rule. Many thanks to Mr. McCullough for his lecture. 

UPDATED: Knoedler & Co: thanks for ALL the memories

After 165 in business, Knoedler & Co gallery is now closed. The website for the gallery has the following announcement “It is with profound regret that the owners of Knoedler Gallery announce its closing, effective today. This was a business decision made after careful consideration over the course of an extended period of time. Gallery staff will assist with an orderly winding down of Knoedler Gallery.”

Reactions to the announcement have been mixed. For example, Lucy Mitchell-Innes, president of the Art Dealers Association of America is quoted as saying “Goodness me, that’s pretty stunning. My reaction is one of tremendous sadness. This is a very venerable institution that provided great art to a number of the great collections and great institutions in this country.”

According to the New York Times article in the Arts section, although it would have been more appropriate for the Obituary section, Knoedler's been in business for more than 165 years. Apparently the business "has been rattled by a series of changes over the past three years, including the recession in 2008." Two years ago, Ann Freedman, who has been with the gallery for 31 years, most recently as its president, resigned. The building where the gallery was housed had to be sold. Lawsuits further strained the financial situation. One of the recent cases involved the Dedalus Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by the artist Robert Motherwell, which accused Ms. Freedman of selling forged paintings by Motherwell. Knoedler was also questioned in regards to a sale of a fake Jackson Pollack.

Apparently, the decision to close the gallery came without warning. On December 2, a London hedge- fund executive sued the gallery and its former director accusing them of selling a forged Pollock painting. Co-founder of the hedge fund alleged that he paid $17 million for a painting called “Untitled 1950” from Knoedler in November 2007 and that in 2010 auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's both, refused to take it on consignment because they doubted the works authenticity

It seems that art law put the final nail into the Knoedler business.

Update: There is a Federal investigation underway to find whether there are many more paintings and drawings sold for years by Knoedler that are actually expert forgeries. Source: New York Times.

General Sources: New York Times; Bloomberg; Lagrange v. Knoedler Gallery LLC, 11-CIV-8757, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.

Wine Steward Accused of Art Theft

"The best things in life are free, but you can keep them for the birds and bees..." One Mark Lugo, a wine steward is suspected of bicoastal art-theft spree. He did take a few bottles of wine that did not belong to him also. In October, Lugo plead guilty to grand theft for the San Francisco heist of a $275,000 Picasso. Having served a 138-day sentence in California, he plead not guilty to grand larceny in New York.

Lugo's San Francisco attorney, Douglas Horngrad, has called him "more like someone who was in the midst of a psychiatric episode" than a calculating art thief.  It may be so, but Lugo is accused of steeling expensive art works from New York hotels and investigators found a $430,000 cache of stolen art at Lugo's apartment including F. Leger's 1917 "Composition with Mechanical Elements."

Lugo is represented by a New York lawyer, James Montgomery, according to whom "when the dust settles, and the DA's office calms down a little bit, we'll find that Mr. Lugo is a man who had no commercial motive at all" in the alleged thefts.

The dust is unlikely to settle quickly. According to the San Francisco district attorney's office, Lugo is  also suspected of several other New York art heists.

Sources: Huffington Post, Art Daily,