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
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
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
When Christie’s Auction House first entered the secondary art market of mainland China in 2005, it licensed its brand to a local auction house and received a total of RMB 97,000,000 (roughly $12,100,000) for its inaugural...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
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
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
Is Art an “Ideal Playing Ground” for Money Laundering? Last week, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations for the U.S. Senate released a detailed, 147-page report titled “The Art Industry and U.S. Policies That...more
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
With the global economy reeling from the direct effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, no sector is spared from its impact, including the art market. As auction houses seek to find ways to sustain business during this time of...more
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
Individuals, trusts and companies buying or selling art via UK galleries and auction houses will now be subject to the same customer due diligence checks as those opening bank accounts in the UK. What has changed? The...more
The potential role of high-end art and antiquities in money laundering schemes has attracted increasing attention over the last several years, particularly as the prices for such objects steadily rise and a tightening global...more
In recent art world news, British artist David Hockney’s iconic painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” (1972) set an auction sale record for a living artist when it sold for an astonishing $90.3 million in...more
In recent art world news, as an update to our recent post on the fall sale of American works from the $300 million Barney Ebsworth collection, the highly anticipated sale of American modern art occurred earlier this week and...more
In recent art world news, over the summer art dealer David Killen purchased a storage locker in New Jersey containing 200 works of art for $15,000 after hearing about it and taking a cursory look before completing the sale. ...more
In recent art world news, more than 85 works from Barney Ebsworth’s art collection will be on the auction block in November at Christie’s in New York. The late travel entrepreneur’s collection is estimated at over $300...more
After four months of silence, the Berkshire Museum suddenly demanded last week that my clients dismiss their still-pending lawsuit over the governance of the museum by claiming that the April decision by the Single Justice of...more
In recent art world news, Sotheby’s reported a $57.3 million net income in the second quarter of this year in a recent earnings call earlier this week. This figure represents a decrease of $19.6 million or about 26% in...more
I am pleased to report on the outcome of a matter we announced in February. After a disagreement with the City of Palo Alto (California) about her sculpture Digital DNA, Sullivan & Worcester LLP client Adriana Varella has...more
In recent art world news, a buyer of a painting recently identified as having been confiscated by the Nazis in 1940 from a Jewish collector in Paris is asking Christie’s to refund the purchase price paid a decade ago for the...more
The decision by a New York court last month in favor of the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné (AMCR) in a lawsuit by the Mayor Gallery Ltd in the United Kingdom is the latest in a series of disputes over the practice of...more
In recent art world news, a Norman Rockwell painting titled “Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe” (1940) from the Berkshire Museum’s collection sold for $7 million (with buyer’s premium added, the figure is about 8.13 million) to a...more
In recent art world news, a painting by celebrated African American contemporary artist Kerry James Marshall generated an unexpected windfall for a Chicago municipal agency last week at Sotheby’s in New York. The vibrant...more
In recent art world news, a coveted David Hockney oil painting titled Pacific Coast Highway and Santa Monica (1990), featuring a colorful California landscape along the Pacific Ocean, has been added to Sotheby’s upcoming...more