The Art Law Podcast

This month Katie and Steve talk about a few important art law cases from 2018 ranging from Nazi looting, to Italian fisherman discovering an ancient Greek statue, to the risks catalogue raisonné committees face when offering even indirect opinions on authenticity. The specific cases discussed are Von Saher v. Norton Simon Museum of Art at Pasadena, No. 16-56308 (9thCir. 2018); the Getty Bronze case decided by the Italian Court of Cassation; and Mayor Gallery Ltd. v. The Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné LLC, No. 655489/2016, 2018 WL 1638810 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Apr. 5, 2018).

Notes for this episode: http://artlawpodcast.com/2019/02/06/2018-art-law-litigation-stories/

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CORRECTION: After the recording of this podcast, the San Francisco School Board, in the face of community protest, reconsidered its decision to remove the George Washington murals from George Washington High School and will instead cover them.

Against the backdrop of global museums distancing themselves from the Sackler name, two highly controversial Whitney Biennials involving activist calls for the destruction and removal of an artwork and, more recently, calls for the resignation of a Board member who made a fortune building a network of defense equipment companies, and numerous other controversies in the United States about the identity of board members, museum donors and artists, Steve and Katie speak with Max Anderson about controversial board members, donors and works of art. Max is currently the President of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation and was previously the Director of the Whitney Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum, among other leading museum director roles.

Notes for this episode: http://artlawpodcast.com/2019/09/04/museum-controversies-reputational-concerns-and-offensive-art/

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Steve and Katie talk about and compare two recent Holocaust-era art cases decided in New York, one in state court on summary judgment and one in federal court on a motion to dismiss grounds. Both cases involve the claims of heirs to recover artwork that left the hands of Jewish owners persecuted by the Nazis, but they otherwise greatly differ.

Notes for this episode: http://artlawpodcast.com/2019/08/05/recent-new-york-holocaust-era-art-cases-come-out-differently/

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Katie and Steve speak with Nanne Dekking, the founder and CEO of Artory and Chairman of the European Fine Art Fair, about Artory’s efforts to use blockchain to create a transparent registry of art sales, the general challenges to transparency in the fine art market, the problem of detecting fakes and forgeries and trustworthy counterparties, and blockchain’s limitations.

Notes for this episode: http://artlawpodcast.com/2019/01/07/the-promise-of-blockchain-transparency-in-the-art-market/

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On this month’s podcast, we take a close look at art auctions – how they work, their place in the art market and the rules and regulations that confine/define them. Auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s now regularly net tens and sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars for a single work. Christie’s recently sold Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi painting for $450 million, by far the highest price ever garnered by a piece of art at auction. At the same time, much about the auction process remains secret. The identity of the buyer and seller is often known only to the auction house, and the reserve price (below which an artwork will not be sold) is known by the auctioneer but not the bidders. While the auctioneer may not sell a work of art below its reserve price, it can bid on the work below the reserve to get the auction going. Steve and Katie discuss these issues and others having to do with regulation, transparency and potential conflicts, and welcome famous Sotheby’s auctioneer Oliver Barker to take us behind the scenes of a big auction.

Notes for this episode: http://artlawpodcast.com/2018/05/10/art-of-the-chase-inside-art-auctions/

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