Greetings!

Last week, we wrapped up the third annual Art, Finance, and Law Symposium at SFMOMA. We addressed topics including the limits to freedom of speech in the arts, current legislative activity around AI, the state of the art market and how it is changing, and repatriation of cultural heritage. We had a full house and everyone seemed to be enthusiastic about the program. In the coming weeks, we will share a recap of the sessions, video recordings, and a photo gallery. Stay tuned.

This month we highlight news of recovery of stolen artifacts, trends in the art market, the instability of the crypto world, artistic freedom, and more.

Delia Violante

Founder of the Art, Law, and Finance Project

Berkeley Center for Law and Business

Dominique Caron - In Tune, Again 48x48 

Academic Corner

NYU LAW | COLUMBIA ART HISTORY & ARCHAEOLOGY

The Winter 2024 edition of Grey Room focusses on Art Beyond Copyright. In their introduction to the collection of essays, editors Amy Adler and Noam Elcott argue that the incentives of copyright protection are meaningless in the context of visual art where “authenticity” is the measure of value and copies are essentially worthless. At the same time, those protections actively discourage the creation of any work that might be considered “derivative” through the constant threat of litigation, even in cases where the fair use doctrine theoretically provides clear protection, such as works of criticism or art history. Read more>

Student Corner

ELEANOR IRIS GARTSTEIN | BERKELEY JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

In her article The Pursuit of Preservation Through Patrimony Laws, Raising 2L Berkeley Law student Eleanor Iris Gartstein questions whether overly-expansive efforts to enforce patrimony laws may lead to the dilution of international respect for those laws. Read more>

Getty Foundation v. Italy

EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The European Court of Human Rights has rejected an appeal of the J Paul Getty Museum and allowed the Italian authorities to move forward with the recovery of the “Victorious Youth”, a Greek statue retrieved from Italian waters and illegally exported in 1964. Press Release. Legal Summary.

UNESCO's 1970 Convention: Past, Present, and Future

UNESCO

Kenya’s accession to UNESCO’s 1970 Convention protecting cultural property took effect on May 15. The number of states recognizing the Convention now stands at 145. Explore the history of the convention with this interactive story map. Read more>

The Ravensburger Case: Who Owns the Past?

THE TRADEMARK LAWYER

Attorney Silvia Stabile writes that a Stuttgart court has thwarted an attempt by Italy to force German toy manufacturer Ravensburger to pay for reproduction of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man. Under Italian law, anyone reproducing a work of “cultural heritage” owned by the state must pay a royalty to the museum that holds the work. Read more>

Egon Schiele Legal Dispute Continues

THE ART NEWSPAPER

The Art Institute of Chicago has disputed the criminal complaint of the Manhattan District Attorney that a 1916 Egon Schiele painting was looted by the Nazis. The AIC asserts that the painting was sold by the original owner’s sister-in-law after the war, and cites a ruling by a civil court that the statute of limitations had expired. Read more>

Report Alert: BofA Art Market Update

BANK OF AMERICA

Shifting price expectations, Fed rate cuts, industry consolidation, a surging market for women artists, and much more. Check out cutting edge trends shaping today’s art market. Read more>

What Younger Buyers Want

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The art market is down, but it’s also being reshaped by the tastes and unpredictable habits of an entirely new generation of younger buyers, the world’s chief auction houses say.  Read more>

The Night That Sotheby’s Was Crypto-Punked

THE NEW YORK TIMES



The auction that was supposed to be an art world coming-out party for NFTs instead exposed the instability at the heart of the crypto world. Read more>

The Confessions of Inigo Philbrick

VANITY FAIR



The wunderkind dealer personified the art market's wealth-generating potential and its unregulated excesses — until he pleaded guilty in what was the largest art fraud in US history. Now out of prison and "wearing the scarlet letter," Philbrick is searching for a second act. Read more>

Stolen Art Recovered

ARTNEWS



The British Museum recently announced the recovery of an additional 268 objects, bringing the total to about 626 out of more than 1500 stolen by former curator Peter Higgs. Read more>

Mystery of a Withdrawn Brice Marden

ARTNET

The audience at a recent Christie’s auction was stunned when Brice Marden’s Event (2004-2007), with a guaranteed price of $30 million, was mysteriously withdrawn, possibly because there were no prospective buyers.  Read more>

Controversy at the National Gallery of Australia

THE ART NEWSPAPER

Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart demanded the removal from the National Gallery of Australia of an unflattering portrait by Aboriginal artist Vincent Namtjira. Despite the pressure, the Gallery has refused to take it down. Read more>

Latest Revelation from Pompeii

BBC NEWS

Stunning frescoes depicting Greek mythology were revealed at Pompeii’s ‘Black Room,’ a banquet hall in a recently excavated house which is almost perfectly preserved beneath ash deposited by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Read more>

Sculpture Park Opens in Montgomery, Alabama

THE ART NEWSPAPER

The Equal Justice Initiative has opened the Freedom Monument Sculpture Park in Montgomery, Alabama, The organization aims to make the history and legacy of slavery in the US undeniable through art and first-person narratives. Read more>

Beyond Boundaries

ART REVIEW

Coinciding with the 60th Venice Biennale, the seventh edition of ECC’s Personal Structures, Beyond Boundaries, brings together over 200 artists and thinkers to investigate a world beyond borders. Read more>

Impact of Gaza War on Artistic Freedom in Berlin

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Berlin, the home of boundary-pushing artists from around the world, has been upended by debates about what can and can’t be said about Israel and the war in Gaza. Read more>

In Defense of Palais de Tokyo

ARTREVIEW

Almost 200 artists, curators, and museum workers have signed an open letter to Palais de Tokyo in support of curatorial freedom after a longtime patron withdrew her support accusing the institution of “wokeism”. Read more>

Meet the Artist

DOMINIQUE CARON

Originally from France, Dominique Caron studied fine arts at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux. After a number of years spent in Africa, she settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her works aim to inspire a stroll through a structure of colors, lines, marks, bumps, grooves, splatters, globs, and repentances. She is inspired by the California light, framed by bold strokes, unfinished, raw, fresh, and by the infinite and heavenly horizons of the places she has travelled, crystallizing them into her own artistic language: Room to Breathe. Her abstract landscapes capture the history of a place, allowing the eyes and mind to wander over improbable crags, veiled clouds, the stroke of a leaf, an open window, one vista emerging from another in a panorama of sensation. Learn more>

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