As announced last fall, in a shift to become almost exclusively a grant-making organization, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is dispersing its entire collection of Warhols, donating some and selling others through Christie’s auction house.

Knoedler, founded by Michael Knoedler in 1846, was for many years one of the oldest and most prominent American art galleries.  But earlier this year, amid reports of a federal forgery investigation focusing on Knoedler’s sales of artworks that—despite attribution to Modernist masters—have no documented provenance, Knoedler’s reputation has gone the way of its business (Knoedler shuttered its doors unexpectedly in December 2011).  The lawsuits followed.

Earlier this year, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts disbanded its authentication committee in part to reflect its intent to shift focus toward maximizing “grant making and other charitable activities.”  Earlier this week, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art announced that with the support of the Warhol Foundation, it will launch the Precipice Fund, a new grant-giving initiative for Portland-based unincorporated visual art collectives, alternative spaces, and collaborative projects.  The fund aims to provide fifteen to twenty small grants, ranging from five hundred to five thousand dollars, for a total of seventy-five thousand dollars annually.

The Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani is considered to be one of the most faked artists in history.  So it is unsurprising that there are more than a handful of unsuspecting owners of counterfeit Modiglianis.

We wrote yesterday about the legal considerations raised by a museum’s accessioning of artwork.  In today’s New York Times, Patricia Cohen discusses additional issues that may arise when museums are challenged with trying to honor “donor intent.”

Collectors lined up to spend record amounts at this week’s contemporary art auctions in New York City.  On Wednesday, Christie’s contemporary-art auction brought in a record $412.2 million. And the evening before, Sotheby’s set a record of its own, bringing in $375.1 million, the highest total for any sale in Sotheby’s history. Thursday’s evening sale at Phillips de Pury, while far behind its larger peers, was solid in its own right, totaling $79.9 million, in the middle of the pre-sale-estimate range.

Pierre Konowaloff is the sole heir to the estate of his great-grandfather, Ivan Morozov, a Russian national whose modern-art collection—which included a Cézanne painting known as Madam Cézanne in the Conservatory (the “Painting”)—ranked among Europe’s finest before World War I.  On December 19, 1918, the Bolsheviks decreed that Morozov’s art collection, including the Painting, was “state property,” and therefore it confiscated all Morozov’s artwork.

Six years ago, a resale royalty law was passed in the United Kingdom requiring a percentage of profits from secondary-market art sales to be paid to the artist or her estate.  Some cried that the law would cripple the British art market, positing that collectors would not buy contemporary art if they also had to pay a resale royalty on top of already skyrocketing prices.  But these fears have not been realized, as demonstrated by the continuing trend of healthy sales for modern and contemporary works.  A Christie’s spokesman said that the royalty law has, in fact, proven to be “pretty irrelevant” and not much of a topic for discussion in the art world.

After artist Cady Noland disclaimed authorship of one of her works (the “Work”) under the Visual Artists Rights Act (“VARA”) based on her assertion that the Work had been damaged subsequent to its creation, she demanded that Sotheby’s withdraw it from an upcoming auction. Sotheby’s obliged, citing to the section in its standard consignment agreement with the Work’s owner, Marc Jancou Fine Art Ltd. (“Jancou”), providing, among other things, that Sotheby’s could withdraw the Work at any time before sale if, “in its sole judgment,” “there is doubt as to [the work’s] authenticity or attribution.”