Greetings!

A new academic semester has started and our calendar is filled with exciting things to come! Here are some highlights:

🎨 Monday, September 23 - a virtual conversation with Jason Pollack and Maggie Hoag of Christie’s on the role of a general counsel at an auction house. Register here>

🎨 Tuesday, October 8 - a session on art forgery with Lance Esplund, author and art critic for the WSJ; Ann Freedman, founder of FreedmanArt; and Berkeley Law professor Frank Partnoy. Register here>

🎨 Monday, October 28 - a transatlantic session on restitution claims for cultural artifacts and property rights with Judge Simon Frankel of the San Francisco Superior Court, and professors Lorenzo Casini and Anna Pirri of IMT Lucca. Register here>

If you missed the third annual Art, Finance, and Law Symposium at SFMOMA last May, here are the takeaways. All session recordings can be found on our website or our YouTube channel.

This month, we highlight news of forgeries, federal lawsuits, endangered ancient world cultural heritage sites, women in restitution, art as a vehicle for action, and more.

Delia Violante

Founder of the Art, Law, and Finance Project

Berkeley Center for Law and Business

Shanna Bruschi - Indelible Love, oil and mixed media 48x48

Academic Corner

PATTY GERSTENBLITH | DEPAUL UNIVERSITY

In her contribution to the volume Heritage Destruction, Human Rights and International Law (2023), DePaul Law Professor Patty Gerstenblith discusses the tension between different constituencies seeking to reconstruct cultural heritage sites in post-conflict situations. She uses as the backdrop the widespread and deliberate destruction of ancient sites by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, as well as the destruction of ancient sites in Timbuktu, the Bamiyan Buddhas, and the Mostar Bridge, all designated as World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. The traditional constituencies involved in reconstruction include the local government, funding bodies, and those who provide the expertise. But, she notes, there is often a conflict between those who seek a careful and “authentic” reconstruction of the sites, and the needs of the local people who may want to rebuild as quickly as possible, or even preserve the destroyed state as way of memorializing the conflict that created it. Gerstenblith pleads for the creation of an international reconstruction protocol that will take into account local concerns rather than leaving the effort entirely in the hands of reconstruction professionals. The chapter was last revised in 2020, but seems even more relevant today in the face heritage-destroying conflicts from Ukraine to Gaza. Read more>

Artists Score Win in Copyright Case

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

A case against AI companies alleging infringement of copyrighted images may now proceed to discovery, a federal judge has ruled. The case had previously been dismissed because the complaint was unclear on whether copies of images were actually made during AI training. Read more>

NFT Artists' Lawsuit Against SEC

BLOOMBERG LAW

Two artists have filed suit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission challenging the agency’s authority to regulate NFTs or non-fungible tokens. The SEC currently interprets NFT sales as “investment contracts”. Read more>

Using Art to Get out the Vote

THE ART NEWSPAPER

Former US first lady Michelle Obama — who addressed the Democratic National Convention in Chicago earlier this week — is breaking into the art world via a partnership between her organization When We All Vote and the art sales platform Art For Change. Read more>

Royal Academy Accused of Censorship

ARTREVIEW

770 artists and public figures have signed an open letter criticizing the Royal Academy’s decision to remove two works from its Young Artists’ Summer Show on the grounds that they were antisemitic. Read more>

Original and Facsimile

THE SUNDAY TIMES

New high-tech copying techniques allow the production of highly-accurate reproductions of valuable artworks, including fine details of texture. But forgers won’t be put out of business anytime soon… A quick look at the back will tell you it’s polyurethane. Read more>

Women in Restitution

CHRISTIE'S

During and after the Second World War, a group known as the Monuments Men fought bravely to safeguard cultural property and return art stolen by the Nazis. But among their ranks were several pioneering women who lent critical expertise and dedication to the cause. Read more>

Chinese Artifacts in Repatriation Row

THE GUARDIAN



The British Museum boasts one of the biggest collections of Chinese antiquities in the west, but it has faced repeated calls to return them to China. Now historical documents reveal that many of the antiquities were acquired with the full cooperation of Chinese officials in the last century. Read more>

Forged Leonardo da Vinci Seized

ARTNET

Spanish police have thwarted the sale of a Leonardo da Vinci forgery. After border authorities seized the work in July 2022, experts at the Museo del Prado in Madrid conducted a careful examination of the painting and found it to be an early 20th-century fake. Read more>

Crimean World Heritage Site Transformed

THE ART NEWSPAPER

Ukraine has appealed to the United Nations to protect Tauric Chersonese in Crimea, a Unesco World Heritage Site, after Russia completed work transforming it into a “historical and archaeological park.” Read more>

The Depth and Breadth of Forgery

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Earl Washington invented elaborate backstories for the wood-block prints he created and sold online as antiquities. The scheme unraveled when a set of his medical-themed forgeries was acquired by an expert in antique medical devices. He is now serving a 52-month sentence. Read more>

Egon Schiele Returned to Heirs

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Seated Nude Woman, a drawing by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele, was returned to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish art collector and Viennese cabaret performer who was killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Read more>

How a Patriotic Painting Became the Internet’s Soapbox

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Freedom of Speech, a 1943 painting by the American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell, has taken on a new life as a popular Internet meme, adorning opinion posts, both serious and satirical, across social media platforms. Read more>

Artists for SF Chinatown Project

AXIOS

San Francisco is calling on artists with ties to Chinatown to apply for several upcoming projects. The City is investing more than $2 million in three public art initiatives in the historic neighborhood as part of a broader effort to celebrate and enrich its cultural heritage. Read more>

Meet the Artist

SHANNA BRUSCHI

Shanna Bruschi is a self-taught Bay Area artist who brings her background as an art-director and graphic designer to her work. She prefers abstraction because it presents the challenge of creating something provocative out of nothing, and never knowing what to expect. Her process is very physical as she uses her palette knife to cover the canvas in thick layers of paint that are worked and reworked, scraped and peeled. Music is an integral part of her process. “Loud, rhythmic music helps take me to an altered state of mind where brushstrokes often follow the beat and forms materialize, simultaneously revealing and disappearing as the music moves me. None of the paintings can be placed, but they all involve the journey from one destination to the unknown. The figures similarly do not tell stories in and of themselves; they cannot be readily identified or located, but are evocative, relaying emotion rather than describing it.” Shanna’s award-winning paintings have been featured in numerous galleries and sold to private collections. Learn more>

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.