Two famed early works by Pablo Picasso will stay at the Guggenheim Museum and MoMA after both institutions reached an out-of-court settlement over a lawsuit alleging the previous owner was forced by the Nazis to sell his artworks in the 1930s.

In a joint statement announcing the settlement, the museums said the continued ownership of the masterpieces “ensures that members of the public _ including millions of visitors, students, scholars, and others _ will continue to enjoy them for generations to come.”

More from The Boston Globe and The Washington Post.

What happens when custom agents declare that a sculpture piece or an art installation is not art, but rather either a conglomeration of individual hardware parts or lacking in three dimensionality?

The major problem for commercial galleries when importing contemporary art works into the UK is that there is currently no general custom category for art works under EU custom law. While there is a general custom chapter headed ‘works of art, collectors’ pieces and antiques’, known as Chapter 97, in order to fall within this the imported art work must fit within a certain sub-category: ‘painting’, ‘print’ or ‘sculpture’. The absence of a residual category for artistic works (similarly to the absence of such a category under UK copyright law’s definition of ‘artistic works’) within this traditional classificatory structure presents potential difficulties for contemporary work such as conceptual art and installations.

To find out how the VAT and Duties Tribunal (London) held regarding several video installations by Bill Viola and a light piece by Dan Flavin, read Frieze Magazine’s interesting article regarding this specific issue.

It’s hard to find a newspaper article today that speaks not only lucidly about art and law, but that is also correct and neutral in its interpretation of its subject matter. Today’s Wall Street Journal has just such a treat. Daniel Grant gives a somewhat brief overview of the current lawsuit brought by photographer Patrick Cariou against Richard Prince for copyright infringement. Grant’s article does a nice job of comparing this lawsuit to two previous copyright lawsuits against Jeff Koons (Rogers and Blanch). Grant points to what seems to be the crucial issue in the recent Prince lawsuit: where do the derivative vs. transformative areas clearly divide? More on point is the fact that this crucial distinction will be an issue for the “average person” to decide. Regardless, with the art world gluttony and and a negative public perception of individuals capitalizing on other people’s assets, Grant may be right that although the tide shifted in favor of visual artists, that same tide may now be shifting back. Quoting the legal adviser to the U.S. Copyright Office, grant concludes: “”There is more sympathy in the legal environment — maybe it has gone too far[.]“

It seems that in difficult financial times people not only protect their intellectual propety assets to their full extent, but also litigate to collect any monies lost due to illegal infringement.

57 years after being bought direct from the artist by Glasgow’s city fathers, [Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross] painting is at the centre of a legal investigation which may yet snare a death metal band from Alsace in France, ashtray manufacturers, and poster-makers in the US, Britain, Italy and Spain.

The [Glasgow City] council believes it has been losing tens of thousands of pounds in unpaid licensing fees and royalties a year from unauthorised copies of Christ of St John of the Cross, which was bought for £8,200 and now valued at more than £60m.

Lawyers acting for Glasgow city council have drawn up a hit-list of 50 companies, manufacturers and artists selling hand-painted copies, who are suspected of illegally copying it. Warnings have been issued to 25 firms and individuals across the world – some wrongly claiming to have the council’s permission to reuse the image – to “cease and desist” or face legal action.

Apparently, Dali’s sale of the painting included copyright ownership to the image. More from The Guardian here.

There’s a big brawl brewing all over the blogosphere over Brandeis University’s decision yesterday to hold a fire-sale of all its artworks located in its Rose Art Museum. Read more on this story in our Deaccessioning Blog here, as well as Donn’s take here and Rosenbaum’s take here.

Spanish police impounded 81 works that had been on display at a hotel in the southern Costa del Sol region. It was not clear whether the pieces were stolen, genuine or fakes. More here.

Tyler Green, of Modern Art Notes, reports that SF MoMA is exhibiting their recently acquired art project by the recent Hugo Boss Prize winner, Emily Jacir, although with an odd disclaimer.

SFMOMA is committed to exhibiting and acquiring works by local, national and international artists that represent a diversity of viewpoints and positions. Works of art can engender valuable discussion about a range of topics including those that are difficult and contested, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Additional information about Emily Jacir’s Where We Come From, including a list of frequently asked questions, is available at the information desk in the Haas Atrium.

Green notes that Jacir’s project, Where We Come From (2001-2003), involves her “using her U.S. passport to gain entrance to Palestinian lands normally difficult or impossible to reach with a Palestinian passport. Once in Palestine, she fulfilled the wishes of Palestinians who had sent her requests, acting as a kind of DJ of geopolitical wanderlust. Jacir then photo-documented her performance of achingly simple requests[.]“

It is an extremely powerful project. SF MoMA’s decision to post a disclaimer to Jacir’s project violently intercedes in the creation of its meaning. We won’t deny the (obvious) political implications of this project, and certainly not at this specific historical moment. However, that is a reading that should be left to the viewing audience alone. The institution’s narrow interpretation of Jacir’s work does a grave injustice not only to the artist, but to the general viewing audience. It is bad enough that the politically correct corners of academia have perpetuated and generated a lame and impotent generation of art historians, but by creating its own editorial addendum to Jacir’s work it also perversely speculates that the majority of its viewing audience is too stupid or uninformed, or worse, that its paying audience lacks any aesthetic and poetic sensibilities to make up its own mind as to the meaning, if any, to Jacir’s work. SF MoMA’s chicken-shit and unconsented editorial of Jacir’s work indicates a growing trend in institutional and museum practice: a vulgar display of power nourished in large part by donor support, and synonymous only with its own ignorance.

We’ve seen other institutional editorial gestures (MASS MoCA and Cooper Union come to mind). The question–the ethical question–one must ask, is to what extent, and for how long, will artists allow institutions to curtail their speech for the sake of institutional and market support.