Greetings!

On May 16, we wrapped up the third annual Art, Finance, and Law Symposium at SFMOMA. Here are the takeaways and a promo trailer. All session recordings and a photo gallery can be found on the website. We are now starting to plan next year's event - stay tuned for the date in the coming weeks.

This month we highlight news of copyrights and activism, fraud and money laundering, art-backed debt securities, tracking looted antiquities, cyberattacks, and more.

Delia Violante

Founder of the Art, Law, and Finance Project

Berkeley Center for Law and Business

Maeve Croghan - Magic Oak, 36x48 oil on canvas

Academic Corner

DARCY GRIMALDO GRISBY | UC BERKELEY

In her book, Enduring Truths. Sojourner's Shadows and Substance (University of Chicago Press, 2015), UC Berkeley Art History Professor Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby uncovers how Sojourner Truth made her photographic portrait worth money in order to end slavery, at the same time taking control of her public image. Featuring the largest collection of Truth’s photographs ever published, Enduring Truths is the first book to explore how she used her image, the press, the postal service, and copyright laws to support her activism and herself. Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby establishes a range of important contexts for Truth’s portraits, including the strategic role of photography and copyright for an illiterate former slave. Read more>

Student Corner

DALLIN JOHNSON | BERKELEY LAW



In his article Copyright Might Be for Banksy, 2024 Berkeley Law graduate Dallin Johnson explores the ways in which Banksy and his work interact with trademark and copyright law, two tools typically available to artists to protect and control their work. Banksy’s history with trademark law in the EU presupposes that he can’t use copyright law without sacrificing his anonymity, but this Article suggests that may not actually be the case. Read more>

Evolved Apes at the Center of a Scam

ARTNET

“U.S. federal prosecutors have charged three British nationals with conspiracy to commit fraud and money laundering for their involvement in a scam to sell non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, of digital artworks known as ‘Evolved Apes.’” Read more>

Suit over Nazi-Looted Sunflowers Dismissed

THE ART NEWSPAPER

A federal judge in Chicago has dismissed a claim brought by the heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy alleging that Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888-89) was sold to the Nazi’s under duress and should be returned. The court held that it has no jurisdiction over the Japanese holding company that owns the painting. Read more>

Dissecting Art-backed Debt Securities

THE ART NEWSPAPER

For decades, Sotheby’s Financial Services (SFS) has been lending money to borrowers who pledge their art works as collateral. SFS has now taken the novel step of packaging a portfolio of these loans – backed by more than 2,800 blue-chip pieces – into a $700 million security offering. The practice raises knotty questions of valuation and transparency. Read more>

Report Alert: Reframing U.S. Policy on the Art Market

THE ANTIQUITIES COALITION

This 2020 report by the Antiquities Coalition’s Financial Crimes Task Force lays out recommendations for closing regulatory loopholes in the Art Market. The report warns that if left unregulated, the American art market could be an unknowing accessory to crimes in money laundering, terrorist financing, and sanctions evasion. Read more>

Policy Update: The Qingdao Recommendations

GLOBAL TIMES



At a recent meeting of the Alliance for Cultural Heritage in Asia, China proposed “Recommendations for the Protection and Return of Cultural Objects Removed from Colonial Contexts or by Other Unjustifiable or Unethical Means”, which it refers to as the “Qingdao Recommendations” after the city in which the meeting was held. Read more>

Tracking Looted Antiquities

SCIENCE

The recently launched Museum of Looted Antiquities tracks repatriated artifacts to better understand the black market trade in antiquities. Among other revelations, their database has allowed them to estimate the size of the illicit market to be about $2.5 billion, based on values listed in court documents, auction records, and other sources. Read more>

Provenance Investigation

NPR

The Kunsthaus Zurich museum has removed from public view five impressionist and post-impressionist works on loan from the Bührle Foundation while the owner conducts an investigation into their provenance. The renewed scrutiny comes as a result of the U.S. State Department’s latest guidelines for handling Nazi-Confiscated Art. Read more>

Art Dealer Guilty of Embezzlement

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE



Internationally-known art dealer Douglas Chrismas was found guilty of embezzling more than $260,000 from the bankruptcy estate of Ace Gallery Los Angeles while acting as the estate’s trustee and custodian. Read more>

Class Action Lawsuit Against Christie's

ARTNET



Just a few weeks after its website was taken over by hackers in a major cyberattack as auction season was kicking into high gear, Christie’s is now the target of a class action suit alleging negligence, breach of implied contract, unjust enrichment, and violation of the New York deceptive trade practices act. Read more>

Joint U.S.-Italian Operation Returns Artifacts to Italy

ARCHAEOLOGY MAGAZINE

A joint operation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Italy’s Carabinieri has returned more than 600 artifacts recovered from antiquities dealers in London and New York. The oldest of the objects dates to the ninth century B.C. Read more>

A Piece of the Action

THE ART NEWSPAPER

The Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) in New York has launched Museum Without Walls, an experience that encourages museum-goers (at no cost) to take home “pieces of art” – fragments of moving-image digital works projected on a giant media wall that are packaged as NFTs on the Tezos blockchain. Read more>

Cyberattacks Know No Boundaries

THE ART NEWSPAPER

Within ten days of the cyberattack against Christie’s, the auction house had fully restored operations and confirmed that no critical data was stolen. The breach has been a wake-up call for galleries, art advisors, dealers and other auction houses, all of whom possess significant confidential customer information. Read more>

New Findings at Pompeii

ABC NEWS

Archaeologists at Pompeii recently completed excavation of an ornate “blue room” and have now opened it to the public for viewing. The room features depictions of female figures representing the four seasons on cerulean-painted walls. Read more>

Meet the Artist

MAEVE CROGHAN

Maeve Croghan’s paintings are a unique interpretation of the natural world in it’s many amazing forms. She paints directly from nature, experiencing a deep connection with her subject, and finishes her works in the studio relying solely on memory and intuition. Maeve has studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, the Portland Museum Art College, and received a BA from the New College of California in “Art and Education” with a focus on community mural-making. Her award-winning paintings have been shown in galleries and museums around the U.S. as well as in Japan. Recently, one of her paintings was chosen for the label of the Georges Dubouef Beujolais Nouveau in France, and she has also been featured on wine labels in the U.S. Maeve is the founder of the “Mendocino Eco Artists”, an activist artist group that puts on shows to benefit and publicize various environmental groups and causes. She has an art studio in Mendocino, as well as in San Francisco, California, at Hunter’s Point Shipyard Artists’ Colony. Learn more>

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