Marguerite Hoffman, a prominent Dallas art collector, filed suit this week against Mexican financier David Martinez for failing to keep her 2007 sale of a star Mark Rothko painting a secret. The suit stems from the painting’s public sale tonight at Sotheby’s, estimated to fetch as much as $25 million. Three years ago, after her 59-year-old husband’s death, Hoffman sold the painting to an undisclosed buyer, with the proviso that the details of the sale remain a secret, according to her lawsuit, filed in a Dallas, Texas, district court. Via Bloomberg News.

Alleging lost profits, “The Hurt Locker” producers Voltage Pictures have declared war on piracy and are planning to sue thousands of people who illegally downloaded the Academy Award-winning picture on the popular file-sharing site BitTorrent. Voltage Pictures is represented by the U.S. Copyright Group, which already has filed lawsuits against people who have downloaded copies of about 10 other films. Via Daily Finance.

FBI agents investigating a long-running art theft ring have arrested Kurt Lidtke, a Seattle art dealer, convicted in a different theft three years ago. The move coincided with the arrests of Jerry and Georgia Christy, of Granite Falls, Wash., who were arrested at their home and were expected in U.S. District Court at Seattle later in the day. The three allegedly conspired to steal art from Seattle-area homes.

Via Seattle PI.

Fabrizio Cammisecra, an Italian graffiti artist, has been sharply criticized for spray-painting walls at the notorious Khmer Rouge execution center, otherwise known as Tuol Sleng, or S-21, where thousands of victims of the Khmer Rouge were tortured and executed between 1975 and 1979. Via Earth Times.

Doesn’t seem like a joke. Posterboy, aka Henry Matyjewicz, was sentenced to 11 months in jail by a Brooklyn judge this morning. Matyjewicz was taken into custody immediately and sent to Rikers Island. Originally expected to get 3 years probation, his no-show in court on May 6th seemed to upset the judge and garner Posterboy eleven months hard time. Ouch! Via Animal.

Jörg M. Colberg, editor and founder of the photo blog, Conscientious, has some thought on plagiarism and copyright vis-a-vis photography.

We have recently witnessed a steep increase in the number of cases of (presumed) plagiarism. I don’t think the issue will go away; but I also do think that we need to think about plagiarism itself – what it means and how we can approach it. I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the subject matter, and I just summarized my current thinking in a longer article entitled Photography, Copyright, Plagiarism, and the Internet. While I’m sure that I overlooked some aspects, I’m hoping to advance the debate a bit by suggesting a set of four criteria that all have to be met in a case of plagiarism.

Kerry James Marshall. Many Mansions, 1994

Chicago artist Kerry James Marshall is designing a 37-foot-high monument in Des Moines, Iowa, on the city’s Principal Riverwalk, commemorating the black lawyers in the state who formed the National Bar Association in 1925. According to the Des Moines Register:

Back in 1925, black lawyers in Iowa, excluded from the American Bar Association, founded an alternative called the National Bar Association (NBA). The irony of discrimination happening in the very place we look to for justice – the legal profession – was compounded by the blatancy of the offense. “If you didn’t tell them you were black, you could join,” says a former NBA president, Judge Odell McGhee. The first meeting was attended by lawyers from all over the country. No state bar admitted blacks.

Marshall’s installation will depict two African “talking drums,” one on top of the other, slightly off center. They represent the goal of equal justice and the occasional imbalance. The base of the work will serve as a stage, with an engraving of the First Amendment on it. Construction is scheduled to begin next year.

Via the Des Moines Register and the ABA Journal.