New film on BBC on art dealer Michel Cohen and the $50M art swindle.

A French court held that the Koons’s company, Jeff Koons LLC, and the Pompidou Centre in Paris, where his work was due to be displayed, must together pay 20,000 euros (~$22,000) to French artist Jean-Francois Bauret’s family.

More here.

From the, “What in the hell is this?” department comes this gem. I ask, is this a law review article or an undergrad comparative literature paper? It’s no wonder Justice Roberts wonders, “If the academy wants to deal with the legal issues at a particularly abstract and philosophical level, that’s great and that’s their business. But they shouldn’t expect that it would be of any particular help or even interest to members of the practicing bar or judges.” He continues to ask, “Is this area of research going to be of help to anyone other than other academics?” The answer, my friends, resides in Michael Anthony Hall’s notable quip from 1985…“I can answer that right now, sir. That’d be ‘no, no’ for me…”

it’s unusual for heirs of an iconic artist like [Thomas Hart] Benton to have enlisted a bank rather than a family member, art adviser or gallery to care for the artist’s assets and legacy.

Typically, artists’ estates are managed by people with personal ties or by a nonprofit foundation formed to bolster the artist’s market value and prestige—often by selling some works into museum collections, organizing shows, chasing down entities that infringe on their artist’s copyrights, and even licensing merchandising.

So what’s the problem? More via the WSJ.

After decades of railing against censorship in the arts, some liberals have now fully embraced it. Statues of Southern generals and Christopher Columbus are already passé. There’s a disturbing new development in art criticism among the elites, and it has nothing to do with whether Renoir was sexist in his personal life. Now, it’s not enough to critique unethical artists or their “problematic” subjects. You must also stand against depictions of bad things — because we are supposedly unprepared to see them.

By Madeline Frye.

An anonymous seller is offering a bundle of alleged early drawings by Gerhard Richter for millions of euros. The star painter is angered and has finally spoken out, saying half the booty should be burned.

More here.

It’s tempting to assume that Trump’s judicial appointees share the goonish incompetence of the man who placed them on the bench, but this assumption could not be more wrong. His picks include leading academics, Supreme Court litigators, and already prominent judges who now enjoy even more power within the judiciary.

He’s filled the bench with some of the smartest, and some of the most ideologically reliable, men and women to be found in the conservative movement.

Via Vox.