The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently dismissed a long-running dispute against Russia concerning the library of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (the Library), a collection of books and papers once held by the...more
I was proud to advise the Allentown Art Museum, which announced today that it has reached an agreement with the heirs of Henry and Hertha Bromberg concerning Portrait of George, Duke of Saxony by Lucas Cranach the Elder and...more
I attended today’s press conference at District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr.’s office in Manhattan at which a drawing by Egon Schiele, Seated Nude Woman, Front View, was transferred to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum. I represent...more
I was honored to be among the speakers this week at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on March 5, 2024. Convened by the World Jewish Restitution Organization and the U.S. State Department, the event announced the...more
Welcome to the Third Issue of Sullivan’s Zoning and Development Newsletter-
This newsletter is a collaboration between members of our Permitting & Land Use Practice Group and the Litigation Department, in order to provide...more
1/19/2024
/ Affordable Housing ,
Appeals ,
Building Permits ,
Construction Project ,
Judicial Proceedings ,
Land Courts ,
Land Use Restrictions ,
Land-Use Permits ,
Mechanics Lien ,
Multi-Family Development ,
Real Estate Development ,
State and Local Government ,
Urban Planning & Development ,
Zoning Laws
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled on January 9, 2024 that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation in Madrid is the owner of Rue Saint–Honoré, après-midi, effect de pluie (1892) by Camille Pissarro, a...more
1/15/2024
/ Appeals ,
Art ,
Art Collections ,
Art Sales ,
CA Supreme Court ,
California ,
Choice-of-Law ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Spain
A trial court in Indiana recently dismissed a lawsuit challenging the proposed sale of three works of art by Valparaiso University: Rust Red Hills by Georgia O’Keefe, Mountain Landscape by Frederic Edwin Church, and The...more
(Germany’s highest court issued a much-anticipated ruling on a challenge by a collector to the listing of his painting in the so-called Lost Art database in Magdeburg, Germany. The Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) ruled that the...more
Sullivan's Permitting & Land Use Practice Group and Litigation Department have released the second issue of their Zoning and Development Newsletter.
The publication aims to provide our firm's clients and others interested...more
7/14/2023
/ Anti-SLAPP ,
Appeals ,
Clean Water Act ,
Conditional Use Permit ,
Easements ,
Energy Sector ,
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ,
Land Developers ,
Navigable Waters ,
Permits ,
Property Owners ,
Property Tax ,
Regulatory Takings ,
Sackett v EPA ,
SCOTUS ,
Site Plans ,
Solar Energy ,
State and Local Government ,
Tax Sales ,
Tyler v Hennepin County Minnesota ,
Waters of the United States ,
Wetlands ,
Zoning Laws
The Supreme Court of the United States has issued its long-awaited ruling in the dispute between photographer Lynn Goldsmith and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts (AWFVA) on May 18, 2023. The Court held the...more
5/26/2023
/ Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Inc v Goldsmith ,
Art ,
Artists ,
Copyright ,
Copyright Litigation ,
Fair Use ,
Intellectual Property Litigation ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Photographs ,
SCOTUS ,
The Copyright Act ,
Transformative Use
Sullivan is pleased to release the first issue of its Zoning and Development Newsletter, a collaboration between members of our Permitting & Land Use Practice Group and the Litigation Department, in order to provide our...more
A new lawsuit seeking to seize a painting by Van Gogh currently at the Detroit Institute of Arts for the show “Van Gogh in America,” a painting which the plaintiff alleges was unlawfully taken has brought back into focus the...more
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has signed into law a new requirement requiring museums to indicate publicly any object in their collection that was displaced by the Nazis as part of what Congress has rightly called the...more
Sullivan has filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the upcoming Supreme Court case Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith. The brief was filed as counsel of record for copyright scholar...more
Consistent with efforts in recent years to apply banking laws to the art market, the prospects of passage of a bill in Congress that would apply those rules to a broad category of advisors and attorneys have recently...more
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (the state’s highest court) recently issued a surprising decision that permits claims against Harvard arising out of a series of daguerreotypes taken of the plaintiff’s ancestors in...more
After a two-year hiatus, the Responsible Art Market Initiative is planning a return to its in-person annual conference at the end of this month in Geneva. For anyone who has attended RAM events or used its catalogue of...more
Today I am pleased to announce that I have filed a brief in the Supreme Court of the United States as counsel of record for amicus curiae Mark B. Feldman, former U.S. Department of State Acting Legal Adviser. We filed the...more
We were privileged to file today a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of our client, art dealer Alexander Khochinsky. The petition asks the Court for reinstatement of a lawsuit...more
11/8/2021
/ Art Dealers ,
Due Process ,
Extradition ,
Fine Art ,
First Amendment ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Foreign Sovereigns ,
International Litigation ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Petition for Writ of Certiorari ,
Poland ,
Restitution ,
Retaliatory Arrests ,
SCOTUS
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) today published in the Federal Register notice of proposed regulations related to the implementation of amendments to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)...more
9/24/2021
/ Anti-Money Laundering ,
Art Collections ,
Art Dealers ,
Art Sales ,
Bank Secrecy Act ,
Financial Institutions ,
FinCEN ,
Fine Art ,
NDAA ,
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Rulemaking Process
Last week, on behalf of our client Alexander Khochinsky, an art dealer, we filed a petition to rehear en banc the June 18, 2021 decision by a three-judge panel affirming the dismissal of the lawsuit against Poland for lack of...more
In connection with the late-2020 amendment to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) to include “dealers in antiquities” as a result of its inclusion in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Treasury Department’s Financial...more
3/24/2021
/ Anti-Money Laundering ,
Art ,
Art Auctions ,
Art Collections ,
Art Dealers ,
Art Sales ,
Bank Secrecy Act ,
FinCEN ,
Fine Art ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
NDAA ,
Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs)
On January 1, 2021, the U.S. Senate overrode President Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021 (NDAA), a bill that (perhaps surprisingly) included rules affecting the art market. Specifically, the new...more
(WASHINGTON-October 22, 2020) The heirs to the Jewish art dealers who were forced to sell the medieval devotional art collection known as the Welfenschatz (in English, the Guelph Treasure) to agents of Hermann Goering in 1935...more
10/23/2020
/ Art Collections ,
Comity ,
Expropriation ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Germany ,
Heritage & Culture ,
Jurisdiction ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Petition for Writ of Certiorari ,
Restitution ,
Sovereign Immunity ,
Takings Clause
Robin Pogrebin at the New York Times has written an excellent piece on the news that the Brooklyn Museum intends to sell several works from its collection to raise money. The museum explicitly relies on the pandemic-inspired...more
9/24/2020
/ Art ,
Art Auctions ,
Art Collections ,
Art Dealers ,
Art Sales ,
Artists ,
Cultural Artifacts ,
Fine Art ,
Historic Preservation ,
Museums ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings