We’ve written before about conceptual artist Cady Noland, whose works command huge prices in the market, but who has a history of being highly particular about how her creations are installed, maintained, exhibited, and sold on the secondary market.  This tendency has resulted, on at least two recent occasions, in litigation over her disavowal of previous works.  Now, both cases have been resolved, but without significant judicial examination of the contours of an artist’s right to disavow her own creations.

The heirs of a prominent Jewish art dealer have sued the Bavarian state over a group of eight valuable paintings that were allegedly looted when the dealer fled Nazi Germany.  See Docket No. 16-09360 (S.D.N.Y.).  The filing likely marks the start of another complex litigation against a sovereign state over artwork clouded by actions taken during the Nazi era.

Over the summer, we reported on a lawsuit against the David Zwirner Gallery filed by a disgruntled collector who had paid $2 million for a Jeff Koons sculpture that the gallery never delivered.  This week, a New York state court rejected Zwirner’s attempt to dismiss the suit; allowing several of the claims against Zwirner to proceed.

The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has passed new legislation imposing strict regulations on art transactions.  The law is intended to increase transparency in the art market by requiring more documentation, and establishing regulatory bodies to oversee the authentication of artworks and investigation of forgeries.  The law may be implemented as early as August 2017.

We have previously covered the litigation arising out of the 2007 sale of a Rothko masterpiece; the work’s seller sued the buyer and an intermediary dealer over alleged violations of a confidentiality provision in the sale contract, after the buyer and dealer resold the piece in a highly publicized 2009 auction.  In late September, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in favor of the defendants, in an opinion that serves as a reminder about the importance of clear contracting in art transactions.

Litigation involving art displaced during World War II—and with it the continued focus on the need for adequate pre-acquisition due diligence—is in the news again with the recent filing of complaint against the Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding Pablo Picasso’s The Actor.  See Estate of Leffman v. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 16-cv-7665 (S.D.N.Y.)

An art investor has initiated legal proceedings in New York state court against a Manhattan gallery she says she “trusted and relied upon” to select artworks as investments, claiming that she now has reason to question key details (like authenticity and purchase price) of several transactions with the gallery.  As is all too common, the parties apparently engaged in multiple art deals—here, involving over a hundred works, over the course of several years—with minimal documentation.  And now that their relationship has deteriorated, a court may have the difficult task of adjudicating the dispute without a written contract in place to guide its analysis.

A disgruntled client’s claims against the Elliot Stevens Gallery and its executive are headed to trial this fall in a dispute involving the client’s purchase of a group of sculptures.

Back in August, the New York Times ran a story about a heated dispute between actor Alec Baldwin and gallerist Mary Boone over a painting by Ross Bleckner.  Baldwin has now commenced a lawsuit in New York state court against Boone and her eponymous gallery, claiming that she defrauded him into buying a different version of the painting he wanted.  See Docket No. 654807/2016 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. Co.).

The spotlight once again is focused on questions concerning the appropriate level of pre-sale diligence in art transactions, this time with allegations against the National Gallery in London.  On Tuesday, the heirs of Margarete “Greta” Moll brought suit against The National Gallery of Art seeking to recover a painting by Henri Matisse, Portrait of Greta Moll, allegedly lost in the aftermath of World War II.  Williams v. The National Gallery of Art, London, et al., Case No. 16-cv-06978.

Two pending cases present opposite but equally curious issues of art authentication by a living artist.  In one, the artist Peter Doig is being sued because he disavowed authorship of a work that a collector says is by Doig; in the other, an artist claims authorship over works that another man claims to have forged.  Both cases pose interesting questions about who, if not the artist, is the final say on whether an artwork is by the artist’s hand.

A dispute between two powerful figures in the international art world has been playing out on a global stage for months.  Now, a major auction house has been dragged into the fray, sparking even more debate about the role of confidentiality in a market that often operates with minimal transparency and places a premium on secrecy.

After a long legal battle in multiple federal courts, the University of Oklahoma has reached a settlement regarding a claimant’s attempts to recover a Nazi-looted artwork by celebrated Expressionist painter Camille Pissarro.
We have previously written about this case, which involves a claim by 75-year-old Leone Meyer, who says that the painting, La Bergère Rentrent des Moutons (“Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep”), was stolen from her family by the Nazi regime during World War II. 

This blog has written often about the Knoedler scandal, which exploded in 2011 when a once-venerable art gallery closed following revelations that, over the course of more than a decade, it had sold about $60 million worth of artworks—purported to be by Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko, de Kooning, and other giants of the Abstract Expressionist movement—that later turned out to be forgeries.  Our previous posts contain more detail, but in short, the works all came to Knoedler through a Long Island art dealer, Glafira Rosales, who claimed to represent an anonymous collector liquidating a collection of previously-unknown masterworks.  It turned out that the seller was a fiction, and the works were actually created by a little-known artist in Queens at the behest of Rosales (who in 2013 pled guilty to a litany of federal crimes).

Back in 2013, this blog covered the dismissal of a libel case against the New Yorker over its portrayal of an art authenticator.  The Second Circuit has now affirmed that decision, signaling the likely end of this dispute—even as the art world continues to struggle with the complex problem of authentication.

This blog has previously covered the case of Bilinski v. Keith Haring Foundation, Inc., a federal lawsuit filed last year in the Southern District of New York.  Collectors of artworks they believe to be by famed artist Keith Haring, sued the artist’s foundation claiming that it had improperly denied authentication, thereby damaging the value of their holdings.  This past spring, a federal judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims in a decision that explored some of the complex legal issues posed by artist foundations and authentication boards.  The Second Circuit has now affirmed that ruling.

Around this time last year, our blog wrote about the history of two works by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele.  Both were once owned by Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish Austrian cabaret performer and art collector who was imprisoned by the Nazis in 1938 and died in Dachau in 1941; it’s unclear what happened to his art during and immediately after World War II, but a handful of the works have surfaced over the years since, sometimes leading to competing claims of ownership.

This blog has covered many examples of the challenges faced by artists in the internet age, from the potential implications for Etsy when its vendors sell counterfeit or infringing products, to the risk that work by independent artists can be swiped and mass-produced for major retailers, to the debate over artist Richard Prince’s appropriation of Instagram snaps.  A recent lawsuit by photographer Christopher Boffoli seeks to hold Internet phenomenon Pinterest accountable when it fails to remove copyrighted material from its platform.

A recent dismissal in New York State Supreme Court, New York County Commercial Division highlights the importance of written contracts in high-value art transactions.  Last week, Justice Shirley Werner Kornreich granted summary judgment to defendants in a case brought by an art and antique dealer, Alexander Komolov, against his former business partners, alleging that they:  (1) sold him several artworks that turned out to be fakes; (2) stole works by Pablo Picasso and Maurice de Vlaminck; and (3) breached an agreement to pay him for a condominium in New York City.  See Komolov v. Segal, Index No. 651626/2011

Last week, a New York appellate court upheld the dismissal of invasion-of-privacy tort claims against photographer Arne Svenson for his 2012 photography series, “The Neighbors.”  The decision marks an important development concerning the intersection of art and privacy laws.