Copyright Law

"It had to be someone who knew me, knew my house and possibly knew my habits"

Posted on July 13, 2009
"Burglars broke into [a Texas] home on June 23 and stole a dozen pieces of art from a who's who of 19th and 20th century artists: Pablo Picasso, French post-impressionist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, early abstractionist Paul Klee and Alexander Calder ...

The AP-Fairey Case Just Got Even More Interesting

Posted on July 13, 2009
The American Lawyer reports that "freelance photographer Mannie Garcia, represented by Boies, Schiller & Flexner partner George Carpinello, filed a memorandum of law in federal district court in Manhattan seeking to intervene in the dispute that so far has pitted The Associated Press against artist Shepard Fairey...

Charitable Deductions Update

Posted on July 11, 2009
A NYT story today on the apparent "collision course" between House and Senate Democrats "over how to pay for a sweeping overhaul of the nation?s health care system" notes that "the president, in his initial budget, had called for capping certain deductions, including those for charitable contributions, at the 28 percent income tax bracket, an idea initially rejected by a number of Democrats in Congress," but says that "some lawmakers who opposed Mr...

Fairey Guilty Plea

Posted on July 11, 2009
The AP reports that Shepard Fairey "was sentenced to two years' probation Friday after pleading guilty to three vandalism charges. Prosecutors dropped 11 other charges. [Fairey] pleaded guilty in Boston Municipal Court to one charge of defacing property and two charges of wanton destruction of property under $250, all misdemeanors...

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"The museum violated no formal rules, but both we and the art world wish its leaders had exhibited more prudence, openness and collegiality"

Posted on July 09, 2009
The LA Times editorial board on the OCMA private sale.

"Artists hold applause for Obama"

Posted on July 08, 2009
Politico looks at the Obama administration's approach to the arts so far.Judith Dobrzynski is quoted as saying: "Obama had a well-defined arts policy and a task force during the transition, so expectations in the arts community rose very high. They disappointed people by not having an arts czar...

Salinger and Prince

Posted on July 07, 2009
A reader points out that Deborah Batts, the Judge who just blocked publication of a Catcher in the Rye sequel, is also the Judge in the Richard Prince infringement lawsuit. So is there anything in the Catcher opinion that gives us any insight into how Judge Batts is likely to rule in the Prince case?The opinion walks through the four-factor fair-use analysis pretty methodically, relying fairly heavily on quotes from other fair use cases...

Roxanna Brown Settlement

Posted on July 07, 2009
Seattle Times: "The federal government has agreed to pay $880,000 to settle a lawsuit filed over the death of Roxanna Brown, an Asian-antiquities expert who died last year while being held at [a] Federal Detention Center."For background on Brown, see here.

More Opportunity Cost (A Continuing Series)

Posted on July 06, 2009
Over the weekend came news that the Albright-Knox would now be open only four days a week.Other cost-cutting measures include (1) eliminating extended hours on Thursday evenings, (2) reducing programming on free Fridays, and (3) reducing the number of major exhibitions...

"In the US, the practice of 'deaccessioning' is more prevalent and even major institutions buy and sell robustly"

Posted on July 04, 2009
Robustly.But remember: "once an object falls under the aegis of a museum, it is held in the public trust, to be accessible to present and future generations."

How Best to Remove Objects from the Public Trust

Posted on July 03, 2009
Daniel Grant examines the question in the Wall Street Journal. One the one hand, those concerned with keeping artworks in the public trust should favor private sales to other museums. But the hysteria that surrounds deaccessioning tends to push people to auction:"In most cases, museums prefer going to auction...

Stimulating

Posted on June 29, 2009
Felix Salmon calls for "a massive increase in federal arts funding."

Another Scream Sentence

Posted on June 29, 2009
The New York Times: "A man who admitted his role in the theft of the Edvard Munch painting 'The Scream' was sentenced Monday to two and a half years in prison by a court in Oslo .... The man, Bjoern Hoen, 41, had been found guilty by a Norwegian appeals court of providing the getaway vehicle that was used in the daytime heist...

Charitable Deductions Update

Posted on June 26, 2009
The New York Times had a story today on the possibilities for paying for President Obama's health care proposal. It includes the following:"Limit income-tax deductions for high earners. This is Mr. Obama?s main idea for raising revenue, but Congress is not likely to pass it except in a greatly scaled-down form...

"Let museums sell art if they must"

Posted on June 26, 2009
The editors of the Schenectady Gazette come out against the Brodsky Bill:"Indeed, cultural institutions should only turn to [deaccessioning] as a last resort. But when it comes to selling a painting or similar asset to keep the doors open or pay the curator?s salary, they ? like any other business ? should have the right...

"I believe it ignores the dire realities that museums like the Albany Institute of History & Art face every day"

Posted on June 25, 2009
Move over, Hugh Davies. Move over, Richard Armstrong. Here comes Christine Miles, director of the Albany Institute of History & Art, writing in opposition to the Brodsky Bill in the Albany Times Union:"Does it make any sense to prevent the deaccessioning of works which then won?t be enjoyed by the public because the institution that houses it can?t afford to keep its doors open? I don?t think so...

Debating Deaccessioning II

Posted on June 24, 2009
I have a piece in the summer issue of The Art Newspaper on deaccessioning. It should all sound pretty familiar to regular readers of the blog, but it was nice to have the opportunity to lay out some of the arguments in a more sustained way and for a different audience...

More on the "Secret" Schoeps Settlement

Posted on June 24, 2009
A pair of posts from Mark Durney.

"A perfect mess with a long, dismal aftermath"

Posted on June 23, 2009
In this week's Time, Richard Lacayo looks back on the 20th anniversary of the "Mapplethorpe Wars," including the criminal obscenity trial in Cincinnati: "Make no mistake, the battle over Mapplethorpe resulted in sustained harm to arts funding in the U...

"Who is this 'public' we keep hearing about?"

Posted on June 23, 2009
The Deaccessioning Blog on this morning's NYT story on the Brodsky Bill.

It's Back

Posted on June 22, 2009
"US Copyright Register Marybeth Peters told Intellectual Property Watch that orphan works legislation is expected to be introduced within the next 10 days."A bunch of posts from the last go-round here.

Brodsky Bill Update

Posted on June 22, 2009
Robin Pogrebin has the latest in the New York Times. She mentions the June 1 letter from "more than a dozen major cultural institutions" (including the Met, MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney) pleading with legislators to slow down. But Brodsky is unmoved: "the problem of deaccessioning is real and growing" and "the need for action is immediate...

"Is it a crime, or is it art?"

Posted on June 22, 2009
The Christian Science Monitor on the "Barrel Monster."

The Long and short of it

Posted on June 21, 2009
The big news just before the weekend was that the city of Long Beach was, according to an LA Times headline, "threatening" the Long Beach Museum of Art with the "sale of artwork."According to the Times, the city owns the museum and 1,400 works of art acquired prior to 1985...

"In fact Kinkade has ? justly ? won the vast majority of the lawsuits which have been brought against him"

Posted on June 21, 2009
Felix Salmon says Thomas Kinkade is "bad, not evil": "The store owners ... lost money when ... the internet made secondary-market values of Kinkade?s work much more transparent. Suddenly, the enormous growth in past Kinkade sales was no longer a good thing: there were a lot of Kinkades to go around, and many of the buyers were people who bought on the assumption that their paintings would increase in value and they could make money on their investment...

"People can interpret them differently, but we did nothing outside the AAMD guidelines"

Posted on June 21, 2009
The LAT's Mike Boehm spoke with Orange County Museum of Art director Dennis Szakacs, who, as far as I can tell, is the first museum director to come under fire for not following the Ellis Rule.

"Judge Slams MoMA, Guggenheim on Secret Holocaust Art Agreement"

Posted on June 18, 2009
That's a headline from Bloomberg today. A few notes:1. The slamming in question took place in March. (Here's a NYT story at the time.) I'm not sure why it's news today. I guess the hook for the story is that the decision "has become the talk of the Holocaust restitution community...

More on the Picasso Sketchbook Theft

Posted on June 18, 2009
Art Theft Central's Mark Durney on the recent theft from the Picasso Museum in Paris: "Its astonishing that given the desirability of works of art by Picasso and the tremendous sums of money the Picasso Museum has spent on sketches in the past that they would not have better security measures implemented protecting such a significant part of their collection...

Change of Heart

Posted on June 18, 2009
Back in December, U.S. District Court Judge A. Howard Matz said Clint Arthur's action against Louis Vuitton "appears to be a misguided lawsuit."In April, a California state court judge dismissed a similar suit, calling it a "prime example" of "opportuntistic litigation...

Kinkade Loss

Posted on June 17, 2009
The San Francisco Chronicle: "A federal appeals court has some dark news for the self-described 'Painter of Light,' Thomas Kinkade - it has restored an arbitration panel's $2.1 million award to two former gallery owners who say Kinkade's company duped them into investing their life's savings in a doomed enterprise...

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