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Congress Steps up Oversight of Art and Antiquities Markets

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

At U.S. Supreme Court, Jewish Heirs Lay Claim to Treasure Taken by Nazi Agents in 1935

(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

A Deaccessioning Decision Tree Grows in Brooklyn—Selling Museum Art in Hard Times

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

“Moralistic Preening” and Broken Commitments Under the Washington Principles—Ninth Circuit Chastises Spain for Keeping Nazi-looted...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit yesterday affirmed the 2019 judgment that allowed the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Museum in Madrid to retain Camille Pissarro’s Rue St. Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie (Rue...more

U.S. Senate Report Takes a Swing at Money Laundering in the Art Market But Strikes Out on Substance

A recent report by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (headlined by Chairman Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Ranking Member Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware) has drawn widespread attention...more

U.S. Supreme Court Will Hear Germany’s Appeal to Keep the Guelph Treasure, Taken by Nazi Agents in 1935

(WASHINGTON-July 2, 2020) The United States Supreme Court today agreed to hear the appeal by Germany and the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (SPK) seeking to dismiss the restitution claim by the heirs to the so-called...more

Remote But In Control: Virtual Depositions are the New Normal

ADVISORY UPDATE: On May 26, 2020, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court issued additional guidance concerning remote depositions, reiterating its support for remote depositions whenever possible in light of continuing...more

Guelph Treasure Heirs Respond to U.S. Brief that Argued Nazi Art Theft Was a Domestic Affair

On behalf of my clients seeking restitution of the Guelph Treasure, or Welfenschatz, we filed today our supplemental brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in response to the Brief of the United States as Amicus Curiae that the...more

U.S. Solicitor General’s Office Advocates Broad Impunity for Nazi Art Thefts

Late Tuesday evening—the day after Memorial Day no less—the United States Office of the Solicitor General filed a brief amicus curiae in our clients’ pending case against the Federal Republic of Germany and the Stiftung...more

Paddle 8 Creditors Battle Over Scope of New York Consignment Law

Since online auctioneer Paddle 8 filed for bankruptcy protection in March, creditors of the company have begun filing their notices of claim in the bankruptcy case. One thing on which the creditors all seem to agree is that...more

Fate of Museum Collections and Endowments Presents Hard Questions in Hard Times

Since analyzing the likely consequence of gallery and auctioneer insolvencies last month, we have been keeping an eye on how the economic crisis borne of the COVID19 pandemic is affecting the art world. Essentially every...more

The Taxman Cometh­—Christie’s Penalty is the Latest Example of Sales and Use Tax Pitfalls

News broke last week that auction house Christie’s had agreed to pay a $16.7 million fine to the Manhattan District Attorney for failing to collect sales tax between 2013 and 2017. This was surprising in many ways, but a...more

Remote But In Control: Virtual Depositions are the New Normal

With the sudden and far-reaching disruption associated with the COVID-19 crisis, parties to ongoing litigation may wonder how their cases will be affected. In response, many state and federal courts have issued emergency...more

Ten Years Later—Lessons Learned from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston Kokoschka Case

There has been some renewed interest in the case a decade or so ago involving a claim by the heir of Oskar Reichel’s family to a painting in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston: Two Nudes (Lovers) by Oskar Kokoschka. In response...more

Paddle 8 Bankruptcy a Harbinger in the Time of COVID19 and the Coming Art World Crisis

Early last week the online auctioneer Paddle 8 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York, on the heels of a recent lawsuit demanding payment for works of art sold at a charitable auction last...more

No Excuses left—SPK Restitutes Han Baldung Grien to Persecuted Artist's Heirs for Reasons that Germany Denies to Jewish Victims

The Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, or SPK) in Berlin announced that it had agreed to restitute a 1537 painting of the biblical figure Lot by Hans Baldung Grien to the heirs of Hans...more

In the Great Green Room, There was…a Shocking Theft—Historic Robbery in Dresden at State Art Collections

While the incomparable Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd does not take place in Dresden, that is where today brought news of a robbery at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the State...more

France Rejects Poland’s Bad Faith Efforts to Extradite Art Dealer Alexander Khochinsky

My client Alexander Khochinsky is safely back in the United States after an eight-month ordeal spurred by Poland’s retaliation for his assertion of restitution for his mother’s property lost in Poland during the Holocaust....more

Heirs of Holocaust Victim Fritz Grünbaum Win Restitution of Nazi-Looted Schiele Drawings

The Appellate Division First Department in New York has affirmed the trial court’s ruling in Reif v. Nagy that the heirs of Viennese actor and Holocaust victim Franz Friedrich (Fritz) Grünbaum are entitled to the return of...more

Guelph Treasure Claims to Go Forward

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today dismissed the petition to rehear en banc last year’s landmark ruling that the heirs of the art dealers who sold the Guelph Treasure (or Welfenschatz) may pursue their...more

Knoedler Gallery Owners May be Liable for Forgery Scandal, Jury Will Decide

The sprawling saga of the M. Knoedler & Co. Gallery forgery scandal is approaching a full decade since the storied gallery closed abruptly in 2011 (fuller background further below). The last pending civil suit related to the...more

Thyssen-Bornemisza Prevails Over Cassirer Heirs' Claim to Pissarro Taken by Nazis Despite Acts “Inconsistent with the Washington...

One of the longest-running court cases in the United States about art looted by the Nazis has been decided in favor of the current possessor, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, an instrumentality of the Kingdom of...more

Germany and its Federal States Announce Collective Declaration with Respect to Colonial Artifacts and Human Remains

Debate has peaked in the last year or so about the treatment and possible restitution of so-called colonial artifacts in Western (i.e., European and North American) museums. The conversation is important for many reasons, but...more

Poland Renews Efforts to Extradite Art Dealer Alexander Khochinsky, Whose 2018 Lawsuit Seeks Damages for Poland’s Previous...

Alexander Khochinsky, the son of a Polish Jew who fled her home just steps ahead of the German invasion in 1941, was detained at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport yesterday. The current detention parallels Poland’s previous...more

Event—Global Auction House Summit in London, February 4-6, 2019

I am pleased to be speaking on a panel at the upcoming Global Auction House Summit presented by Invaluable, the leading technology partner for online auction services. I will be presenting on the issues of Managing Reputation...more

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