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.

Earlier this summer, a heated dispute erupted between a Manhattan gallerist and a private art advisory business, in a case that raises issues regarding the roles of galleries and advisors at the high end of the art market.

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.

Real-estate developer and art collector Michael Shvo has been indicted in an alleged tax-evasion scheme relating to fine-art purchases. Shvo allegedly participated in a scheme to evade over $1 million in state and local sales tax associated with the purchase of fine art and other luxury items, according to a press release from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, by falsely representing to art galleries and auction houses that his purchases would be shipped out of state, when they were actually shipped to his New York addresses.

An amended complaint has been filed in a case against art dealer David Zwirner, adding claims for violation of New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law.  As we recently discussed, Zwirner has been sued by UK entity Blue Art Limited over a $2 million deal gone bad.   The initial complaint concealed the description of the artwork to avoid “possible further damage to the Work’s value,” but the amended complaint clarifies that the sculpture at the center of the dispute is Gazing Ball (Centaur and Lapith Maiden), by Jeff Koons.

Prominent art dealer David Zwirner and his eponymous gallery have been sued by a buyer over a $ 2million deal gone bad, in a case that should serve as a reminder about the importance of clear contracting regarding the timing of art transactions.

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 recent settlement involving several major art-world players raises some important points about contracting in art transactions.

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.

Appropriation art is back in the news, as two of the biggest names in the field navigate the latest legal claims filed against them.
A few months ago, we wrote about a new lawsuit filed against Jeff Koons over his appropriation of a photograph from a 1980s liquor advertisement.  The defendants in the case (Koons and auction house Phillips) filed answers to the complaint, but in mid-April, the parties informed the court that they had reached a settlement, and the case is now closed.  But shortly after the Koons complaint was filed, another giant of appropriation art, Richard Prince, was haled into court for his latest dance on the line between fair use and copyright infringement. 

After much legal wrangling, a jury heard testimony last month in the first civil trial arising out of the art forgery scandal that took down one of New York’s most prominent galleries.  The story began in 2011 when word spread that, over the course of more than a decade, the once-venerable Knoedler Gallery 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.  Since then, more details have emerged.

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).

Conceptual sculptor and artist Cady Noland’s works have garnered international acclaim and set records at auction.  She has also, however, received attention for her complex and sometimes-fraught relationship with her past works.  Last fall, she pointedly refused to endorse a show containing some of her work, and she has in the past expressed her concerns with how her creations are installed, maintained, exhibited, and sold on the secondary market.  Her vigorous oversight of works has even resulted in litigation.  Last week, her purported disavowal of one of her works that had been restored without her permission sparked a new lawsuit, and raised more questions about the scope of an artist’s right to disclaim authorship of her own works.

Famed “appropriation artist” Richard Prince has spent much of his career testing the boundaries of fair use.  He was the defendant in the high-profile case of Cariou v. Prince, which revolved around a 2008 exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery called “Canal Zone,” in which Prince extensively appropriated works from Yes Rasta, a book of works by photographer Patrick Cariou.  Cariou’s ensuing copyright-infringement lawsuit culminated in a 2013 Second Circuit opinion, which held that the majority of Prince’s works constituted fair use of Cariou’s photographs under federal copyright law. 

Beginning in the 1990s, art collector Richard McKenzie, Jr. frequently turned to Manhattan’s Forum Gallery and its director Robert Fishko for assistance in purchasing artwork, both for McKenzie’s own collection and for the Seven Bridges Foundation, which McKenzie founded to support emerging artists.  But when McKenzie’s and Fishko’s longstanding relationship went sour and accusations began flying, the result was years of public acrimony and protracted litigation in two different states.  The basic message to have emerged from this bitter legal battle is that clear contracting at the outset any art-related course of dealing often will head off problems before they arise.

For much of the last decade, the art world has been riveted by the story of infamous art dealer Larry Salander.  Around 2007, civil suits and allegations of fraud began to dog the prominent dealer, ultimately leading to Salander’s bankruptcy and the shuttering of the once-great Salander-O’Reilly Galleries.  By 2009, a lengthy criminal investigation revealed that Salander had been bilking customers, artists, and investors for years.  Today, Salander assets are still being sold off to satisfy creditors, and Salander himself is in prison after pleading guilty to charges including grand larceny.  But those who did business with him are still trying to sort out the tangled mess he left behind.   This month, an appeals court has weighed in on one of the cases that arose out of Salander’s complex double-dealing—or in this case, triple-dealing.  This case is yet another example of a recent trend of courts closely scrutinizing buyers’ pre-sale due diligence.

In the fall of 2012, the MacAndrews & Forbes Group, LLC and MAFG Art Fund, LLC, two holding companies controlled by business mogul Ronald Perelman sued legendary art dealer Larry Gagosian and his Gagosian Gallery over a complex series of transactions involving works by, among others, Cy Twombly and Jeff Koons.  Last week, the case ended with a defeat for Perelman—and a reminder to art buyers that courts are increasingly scrutinizing their pre-sale diligence almost as closely at times as the dealer’s alleged wrongdoing.

This blog has previously covered the strange ongoing saga of the “Gurlitt Collection”—a spectacular trove of well over 1,000 artworks amassed by German art dealer, Hildebrand Gurlitt, during the Nazi era.  Gurlitt was one of only a few dealers authorized by Nazi leaders to trade in “degenerate” works of art that had been confiscated or looted by the Nazis.  After World War II, the Gurlitt family claimed that their artworks had been destroyed during the bombing of the German city of Dresden.

In the last few months, three different lawsuits have been filed that highlight some of the legal complications involved in seeking, offering, or relying upon authentication of works of art.  We intend to follow closely each of these cases, and other important legal developments concerning art authentication.