Europe

UK Customs seizure of looted Libyan statue: A dispute over a highly attractive marble statue sparked headlines in the national press in early September 2015. It had been seized by Customs officers and kept in the British Museum for safekeeping during the legal proceedings. The District Judge, John Zani, had examined the statue there before coming to a decision that it had been looted from Libya and would be forfeited to the Crown before being returned to the Libyan Government. As in many other cases involving art and antiquities, much of the judgment was taken up with expert evidence relating to quality and value.

22.10.2015, Institute of Art & Law Art Blog:  UK Customs seizure of looted Libyan statue

Nazi claims spur fight between Vienna and Krakow over Bruegel: A masterpiece by Renaissance artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicting a medieval festival celebrating the clash of seasons has become the latest painting to spark an ownership tussle, after allegations that the work was looted by the Nazis from Poland during the second world war.

21.10.2015, Financial Times:  Nazi claims spur fight between Vienna and Krakow over Bruegel

23.10.2015, Artnet News:  Nazi Loot Claim Over $77 Million Bruegel Painting Triggers Row Between Austria and Poland

Temporary export hold on rare Rembrandt portrait: Rembrandt’s late career Portrait of Catrina Hooghsaet is the subject of the UK Culture Minister’s latest export licence deferral. The painting, which had been in the collection of the Welsh aristocratic Douglas-Pennant family, was reported to have been sold earlier this year for £35 million.

21.10.2015, Institute of Art & Law Art Blog:  Temporary export hold on rare Rembrandt portrait

19.10.2015, Artnet News:  UK’s Culture Minister Places Temporary Export Ban on $54 Million Rembrandt Portrait

From Caravaggio to Graham Ovenden: do artists’ crimes taint their art?: In Court 1 of Hammersmith magistrates court on Tuesday, a judge was deciding the fate of hundreds of photographs and pictures. District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe had to rule on whether works by and belonging to the artist Graham Ovenden, a convicted paedophile, were indecent. She decided they were, ordering the destruction of a number of them, including photographs of young girls taken by the French writer and artist Pierre Louÿs in the 1860s and 1870s, and works by the German artist Wilhelm von Plüschow. The judge acknowledged she would “invite the wrath of the art world” and said she was “no judge of art or artistic merit”. Outside the court, Ovenden said: “I am a famous artist. I am an equally famous photographer, and they are destroying material which has been in the public domain for over 40 years.”

17.10.2015, The Guardian:  From Caravaggio to Graham Ovenden: do artists’ crimes taint their art?

National Crime Agency Warns British Museums Against Imminent Threat of Organized Crime Rings: The Arts Council of England has warned British museums of a “SEVERE AND IMMINENT” threat of “attack.” The warnings originate with England’s National Crime Agency, which fights economic crime and cyber crime, and is involved with border policing. According to a source in Scotland, the National Crime Agency “are aware of a group who have made reconnaissance visits to a number of museums and other venues across the UK.”

21.10.2015, Artnet News:  National Crime Agency Warns British Museums Against Imminent Threat of Organized Crime Rings

21.10.2015, The Art Newspaper:  UK museums on heightened alert against attacks

Another Goya, another art law story: As hinted at, there is another painting currently hanging at the Goya exhibition at the National Gallery with a story to tell. Unlike the Marquesa de Santa Cruz, this one relates to an episode involving theft, a botched ransom scheme and the adoption of new criminal legislation.

15.10.2015, Institute of Art & Law Art Blog:  Another Goya, another art law story

United States

Statue May Be a Lost Work by Donatello: Andrew Butterfield, an art dealer and Renaissance scholar, had seen the two-and-a-half-foot tall wooden sculpture several years before, in a photograph, and thought it was “really fantastic.” “It felt so much like the embodiment of the early Renaissance,” he said recently. He passed on making an offer then. But the gilded figure of a plump, graceful cherub, or putto, nagged at him, and when he finally did buy it, in 2012, it set him off down an art-historical detective trail that made him glad he followed his instincts. Mr. Butterfield and several other experts he has enlisted now believe the statue is a lost work by Donatello, one of the defining artists of the Renaissance, and a rare example of the artist’s work in wood, making the discovery not only a major addition to Donatello’s surviving corpus but also to the history of Western sculpture.

21.10.2015, New York Times:  Statue May Be a Lost Work by Donatello

21.10.2015, Artnet News:  Scholars Say Art Dealer May Have Discovered Two Lost Donatello Sculptures

22.10.2015, Art Market Monitor:  Butterfield’s ‘Donatello’ Gets Its Day In the Sun

Appeals Court Says No to Frenchman’s Efforts to Reclaim Van Gogh Work from Yale: A federal appeals court has awarded Yale University a victory in round two over a long-running wrestling match over a Van Gogh painting that is valued at $200 million. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected the arguments that the masterpiece, “The Night Café,” be returned to the family from which it was taken by the Bolshevik government of Russia in 1918. In making its ruling, the court upheld a Connecticut judge’s ruling that the the “act of state” doctrine precluded the claims of French citizen Pierre Konowaloff. The doctrine generally requires U.S. courts to presume the validity and legality of a foreign state’s action with regard to its own nationals within its own borders.

22.10.2015, The Connecticut Law Tribune:  Appeals Court Says No to Frenchman’s Efforts to Reclaim Van Gogh Work from Yale

Flood of restitutions deepens as museums investigate objects bought through Subhash Kapoor: What began as a trickle has now become a flood as more institutions around the world return works of art that were bought from Manhattan antiquities dealer Subhash Kapoor, who ran the now defunct gallery Art of the Past for over three decades. Kapoor is awaiting trial in India on charges of smuggling looted artefacts worth more than $100m. He denies any wrongdoing. His gallery manager Aaron Freedman, however, pleaded guilty in 2013 in New York Supreme Court to possession of stolen property and is working with federal authorities, who have confiscated more than 2,000 objects from storerooms that belonged to Kapoor and his associates. Internal investigations at a number of museums have prompted a wave of restitutions in recent months.

21.10.2015, The Art Newspaper:  Flood of restitutions deepens as museums investigate objects bought through Subhash Kapoor

Luke Brugnara Gets Seven Years in Prison for Art Fraud: On October 20, a federal judge in San Francisco sentenced real estate investor Luke Brugnara to seven years in prison for defrauding a New York art dealer. The former real estate tycoon was indicted in June 2014 after he purchased an Edgar Degas bronze Little Dancer sculpture among other works that he said he was planning to install in a museum to be built in San Francisco, which were allegedly delivered to Brugnara’s home in San Francisco, according to SF Gate; he was charged with mail fraud after he allegedly received the works and never paid for them.

21.10.2015, Artnet News:  Luke Brugnara Gets Seven Years in Prison for Art Fraud

San Francisco Museum in Turmoil as Board President Accused of Financial Misconduct: San Francisco city officials are looking into a complaint filed against philanthropist and board president of San Francisco’s de Young museum, Dede Wilsey, over a $450,000 payment to a museum staffer, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The complaint from the museum’s chief financial officer, Michele Gutierrez, is being investigated by City Hall and the office of the state Attorney General Kamala Harris.

19.10.2015, Artnet News:  San Francisco Museum in Turmoil as Board President Accused of Financial Misconduct

World

When It Comes to Art-Backed Loans, It Pays to Be a One-Percenter: In a comprehensive overview of the booming global business of art lending, Bloomberg writers Katya Kazakina and Mike Weiss sum up how prevalent this type of lending has become at boutique firms and corporate behemoths alike. Perhaps more importantly, for interested collectors, they describe how one goes about getting the best possible rate. In a nutshell, make sure you are super-rich. Meaning, at the level of Steve Wynn or Steve Cohen.

19.10.2015, Artnet News: When It Comes to Art-Backed Loans, It Pays to Be a One-Percenter

20.10.2015, Bloomberg:  How the One Percent Get a One Percent Interest Rate

Have Multi-Million-Dollar Forgery Scandals Changed the Art Market for Good?: Five years ago, the handshake deal in art transactions seemed doomed when two massive forgery scandals sent shivers through the art world. Everyone the market counted on had been fooled. Christie’s and Sotheby’s had sold the forgeries, experts had authenticated them, the Met and other museums had exhibited them, major dealers had circulated them.  In 2010, Wolfgang Beltracchi was arrested in Germany and admitted to forging 20th-century masters like Max Ernst and Fernand Léger. The forgeries may number in the hundreds.  A year later, the prestigious gallery Knoedler & Company, one of New York’s oldest, shuttered amid allegations it had sold some $60 million of fake Abstract Expressionist paintings. The allegations later proved correct.

19.10.2015, Artsy Net:  Have Multi-Million-Dollar Forgery Scandals Changed the Art Market for Good?

New Study Reveals ISIS Isn’t the Only Group Looting and Destroying Syrian Cultural Sites: ISIS isn’t the only one responsible for the looting and destruction of cultural heritage sites in Syria, according to a recently-published study led by researchers at Dartmouth University. Based on an analysis of satellite imagery of roughly 1,300 Syrian archaeological sites, Kurdish opposition forces, and even Syrian authorities, may also be involved in the lucrative antiquities market.

21.10.2015, Artnet News: New Study Reveals ISIS Isn’t the Only Group Looting and Destroying Syrian Cultural Sites

UN to Send Blue Helmet Troops to Protect Heritage Sites from ISIS: The United Nations has formally approved the deployment of Blue Helmet troops to guard heritage sites around the world form Islamist extremists. Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini announced the approval on Saturday. According to AFP, the protective measure was put forward by the Italian government.

19.10.2015, Artnet News: UN to Send Blue Helmet Troops to Protect Heritage Sites from ISIS