Introduction

Art export laws are designed to prevent art and artifacts of significant cultural value from leaving its country of origin while also preserving the home country’s competitiveness in the international art market. Many countries have struggled with striking the right balance: Germany’s recent amendment to its cultural heritage protection law in June 2016 was fiercely opposed by the country’s private collectors and art dealers who are now required to obtain an export license for works older than 50 years that are valued over £150,000. Italy sought to achieve balance between government and individual interests by increasing the threshold for…
Continue Reading Masterpiece by Bernardo Bellotto Purchased by London National Gallery Consequent to Temporary Export Bar

On December 16, 2016, President Obama signed the HEAR Act into law, establishing a uniform statute of limitations to govern claims seeking recovery of Nazi-confiscated art.
Continue Reading Can You Hear Me Now?: Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act

Effective January 1, 2017, art dealers operating in California will have a new certificate of authenticity requirement.  AB 1570, recently signed into law by Governor Brown, requires a certificate of authenticity for all autographed items sold for over $5.  The new law is an expansion of CA Civil Code §1739.7, which had regulated autographed sports memorabilia.  AB 1570 removes the “sports” limitation, potentially bringing all non-sports autographs, including art, within its purview.
Continue Reading Not What I Signed Up For: CA’s New Autograph Law

Confidentiality provisions are not a new or novel inclusion in agreements for the sale of assets, let alone the sale of artwork. However, the extremely drawn out case of Hoffman v. L&M Arts, et al, presents a rather odd view on the scope and nature of confidentiality provisions within the art law context. Specifically, it provides buyers and sellers of artwork with important advice for the inclusion and construction of confidentiality provisions in future sales. The case also presents the interesting issue of whether a confidentiality provision requiring that the transaction for the sale of artwork remain confidential can preclude…
Continue Reading Just Between Us: Buyer of Rothko Painting Sued for Breach of Confidentiality

Yesterday, August 23, 2016, U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman reached a verdict in the authentication case against Peter Doig. He stated that Doig “could not have been the author of the work”, but rather in all likelihood Pete Doige created the piece of artwork. In reaching his verdict, Judge Feinerman mentioned that Doig was in high school in Toronto at the time when he was alleged to have been in prison, as evidenced by yearbook photos.
Continue Reading Update: I Swear It’s Not Mine – Artist Sued for Denying He Created Art Piece

Artist Peter Doig, whose pieces regularly sell for $10 million, is currently entangled in a rare and rather odd lawsuit, which involves a work Doig denies he created. While disputes of the authenticity of pieces of artwork are not uncommon, typically the artist is deceased when the dispute arises. However, even in the rare cases where the dispute arises while the artist is alive, the artist disputes the artwork under the Visual Artists Rights Act, as adopted in 1990, which allows an artist to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of any work which has been…
Continue Reading I Swear It’s Not Mine – Artist Sued for Denying He Created Art Piece

News of up-and-coming Detroit-based artist, Katherine Craig, splattered across headlines in the art world when she recently filed a lawsuit under Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). The complaint requests injunctive relief against the new owner of the building on which her mural is displayed, asserting that the building owner’s plans for renovation and/or sale threaten to “deface, modify, mutilate, or destroy” the art in violation of Ms. Craig’s rights granted under VARA.
Continue Reading Don’t Cry Over Spilled Paint — Sue! VARA Claim Filed Against Detroit Real Estate Company

After a period of significant growth from 2009 to 2014, the Chinese art market has experienced a drastic decline in the first half of 2015 with reports that the fine art auction turnover contracted at 30% less than the 2014 period. Interestingly, Ai Weiwei, one of China’s most well-known and most controversial contemporary artists, has not been affected by this turn in the market. The divergence between the general downward trend in the Chinese art market and the increasing value of Ai Weiwei’s work illustrates how politics in China continues to have a substantial impact on the trajectory of the…
Continue Reading Politics – The Invisible Force Behind China Artist and Art Market

In support of the international crackdown on the black market trade of looted cultural artifacts, the FBI recently announced that art dealers may be prosecuted for engaging in the trade of stolen Iraqi and Syrian antiquities. Terrorist organizations such as Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (“ISIL”) have pillaged these countries of their cultural relics for sale on the black market. Many find their way into the hands of art dealers and collectors in the Europe or even United States. In response, the FBI released an alert titled “ISIL Antiquities Trafficking” on August 25, 2015. Perhaps most strikingly, this…
Continue Reading Crime Doesn’t Pay (as much as it used to) – FBI Cracks Down on Trade of Looted Syrian and Iraqi Cultural Artifacts