Friday, March 29, 2024
 


Rare Polaroid Photo Collection in Limbo


According to the Star Tribune, a court-appointed receiver in the Tom Petters Ponzi scheme case may have the last say as to the fate of a Polaroid photography collection valued between $7 and $11 million. The photographs are of course one-of-a-kind, and signed, by artists such as Warhol, William Wegman, Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.

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From the Star Tribune:

Though not widely known, Polaroid’s collection has some 16,000 photographs, including more than 600 works by nature photography legend Ansel Adams, 13 large self-portraits by pop artist Andy Warhol and photos by craftsmen such as Dorothea Lange, Olivia Parker, William Wegman, Rosamond Purcell and Dawoud Bey. Most of the collection resides in an office building in Somerville, Mass., just north of Boston. Thousands of pieces are currently on loan to the Musee de L’Elysee, according to court documents.

More from the Tribune here.

 

New Guinea Warrior Sues New Yorker

here), where he detailed the ongoing and deadly feuds between New Guinea clans. Turns out that a clan member and key eye-witness, Daniel Wemp, has just turned on Diamond, and with the help of a lawyer, now claims cultural “otherness,” and that his “recollection” of murder, rape, and pig theft was all fiction. Wemp’s lawyer, Mako John Kuwimb, claims that Wemp “has never killed anyone or raped a woman. He certainly has never stolen a pig.”

New York Magazine has a bit more on this story here.

 

Stanford Law Grad Bullied Christie’s


Proof that a law degree does not equate to ethical litigation. The ABA Journal reported today that a Stanford Law grad used his litigation skills to pursue a meritless and unethical lawsuit against Christie’s auction house for allegedly failing to sell a painting. In effect, the Stanford law grad’s “bad-faith litigation…was both filed without adequate basis and pursued in a vexatious and unreasonable manner.” The magistrate judge opined:

Here, there is no public wrong to be righted, no class of victims seeking redress, no constitutional liberty being vindicated. Instead, a greedy individual, with the advantage of a legal education and a claimed litigation expertise, has initiated and maintained this lawsuit, which anyone with a modicum of common sense would have soon realized was without merit. Nevertheless, with myopic vengeance, Fastov has pursued the defendants, using and abusing them and the judicial process.”

Read more on this here.

 

Lawyers, Christopher Knight, and the Straw Man


Christopher Knight took offense to our brief analysis of his attack on The Art Law Blog’s Donn Zaretsky, Art in America, and blogging in general. His remarks were made availabe earlier this week, but in case our readers missed them, here are his comments:

lambast, verb (informal) “to thrash or scold severely”

Here’s how I lambasted blogging as a critical apparatus in the post to

which you refer:

“…to my knowledge he’s never made a sustained argument explaining

[his position]. Usually it’s just asserted in a quick comment on a

deaccessioning story in the news, in a snarky reference to a quote from

someone else (including me) or even as a stand-alone non sequitur. Such

is the nature of routine blogging.”

Wow! What a thrashing! Call 911!

Routine blogging is not conducive to extended argument, as I know

because I do blog. As I also know, it’s easy to step outside

routine–if one actually has a sustained argument to make about a major

issue.

However, Knight must agree that given his use of “quick comment,” “snarky reference,” and “stand-alone non sequitur” followed by the conclusory and unanalyzed “such is the nature of blogging,” one cannot help but make the logical conclusion that Knight believes all blogging is genetically impotent. Here is the direct quote from his LA Times story:

Usually it’s just asserted in a quick comment on a deaccessioning story in the news, in a snarky reference to a quote from someone else (including me) or even as a stand-alone non sequitur. Such is the nature of routine blogging.

We agree with Knight that many times blogging can be “snarky,” and used solely for “quick commentary.” In fact, we at Clancco practice the latter many a time. Yet this must be accompanied by a brief explanation. Those of us that practice law are many times ethically (and legally) obligated to abstain from legal commentary or analysis for many reasons. However, given these restrictiosn, this does not keep many of us from indexing and highlighting the important (and incidental) news surrounding visual culture and law.

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We would like to make two suggestions to Knight: one, to not take the emotional and easy way out of what could be an enlightning and productive discussion about the art of deaccessioning, especially given the current crisis. And secondly, that if there is a strawman that was created, it was the classic and predictable one of the “lawyer as ambulance-chaser.” We can guarantee Knight one thing: people, including artists, will never need an art critic in a time of personal crisis; we all know who will be called upon.

 

Fairey Desperate


The Shepard Fairey v. AP soap opera has just gotten a bit more ridiculous, all thanks to Mr. Fairey. According to Techdirt:

Fairey has filed new counterclaims against the AP, including that the AP used the photo of Fairey’s poster without getting a license. He also lists out a number of other images of artwork that the AP did not get a license to use, but which it uses within photos[.]

Where to start? Assuming Fairey has actual copyright ownership over the Obama “hope” poster image, it would be extremely difficult to contend that the AP does not have a valid “fair use” argument for using that same image to describe the ongoing lawsuit and cultural property issues raised by the lawsuit, both of which are clearly “newsworthy.”

One senses a desparate attempt by the Fairey team to get out of this legal swampland they created for themselves, and now quite possibly for other artists.

 

Another Day, Another Deaccession


Hot off the Zaretsky v. Knight boxing match, ignited by Zaretsky’s Art in America article on deaccessioning, comes a new deaccessioning, this time from the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, N.J.

Read the rest of this entry »

 

The Louvre, Mona Lisa, and the Greatest Crime


A Clancco reader pointed to this interesting book, The Crimes of Paris: True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection. According to the book’s website:

In 1911, it fell victim to perhaps the greatest theft of all time–the taking of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Immediately, Alphonse Bertillon, a detective world-renowned for pioneering crime-scene investigation techniques, was called upon to solve the crime. And quickly the Paris police had a suspect: a young Spanish artist named Pablo Picasso.

The Boston Globe has a brief analysis of this book here, including:

Before the heist took place, Valfierno commissioned a forger to make six copies of the Mona Lisa to sell to American millionaires. The forgeries were then shipped overseas and stored until the time was right.

 
 
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