The Boston Globe addressed this week Sullivan & Worcester LLP client Mark Rappaport’s dispute with Boston University professor Ray Carney concerning the custody of Rappaport’s original film archive. My partner Kevin Colmey has represented Rappaport in this regard for over a year, and I appeared on Rappaport’s behalf at a hearing last year as well.
Nicholas O'Donnell
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Topics: Local Color, The Silver Screen/Color Me Lavender, Chain Letters, Mark Rappaport, Boston University, The Boston Globe, Casual Relations, Impostors, Collections, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, The Scenic Route, From The Journals of Jean Seberg
The 1879 Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting entitled “Paysage Bords de Seine” that was discovered at a Virgina flea market, but which may also have been stolen from the Baltimore Museum of Art more than sixty years ago, is now the subject of a federal court case in Alexandria, Virginia. The United States has seized the painting and filed an action, known as "interpleader," to sort out the proper ownership of the work.
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Topics: Sadie A. May, Fireman’s Fund Insurance, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, interpleader, Seine, Amalie Adler Ascher, Rule 22 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Virginia, Herbert L. May, Manassas, Baltimore Museum of Art, 28 U.S.C. § 1335, Doreen Bulger, Adams Davidson Galle, The Potomack Company, Washington Post, Museums, Marcia “Martha” Fuqua, Paysage Bords de Seine, Civil Forfeiture, Ted Cooper
The Sullivan & Worcester LLP Art and Museum Law Group has issued a new client advisory about the Supreme Court’s decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. As analyzed in the advisory, the Court has extended the “first sale” doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Act to copies of protected works that were lawfully manufactured and first sold abroad and later re-sold in the United States, in a result strongly advocated by United States museums. The decision abrogates the earlier view that the “first sale” doctrine applied to copies manufactured outside the United States only if an authorized first sale occurred within the United States. The implications are significant for museums and anyone engaged in visual arts commerce who otherwise might have had to search for permission to import or display works made overseas.
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Topics: Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons Inc., first sale doctrine, Sullivan & Worcester LLP, Copyright, Art and Museum Law Group
For the second time in less than four months, a complaint has been filed against the Metropolitan Museum of Art over its admissions fee policy. Whereas the November, 2012 action seeks injunctive relief to compel the Met to change its practices, the newest case has been filed as a class action and seeks money damages as well. The Museum has responded forcefully in a statement by Director Thomas P. Campbell challenging the new case.
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Topics: Theodore Grunewald, New York City, General Obligations Law § 349, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Filip Saska, Patricia Nicholson, Stephen Michelman, Tomáš Nadrchal, Thomas P. Campbell, Museums
I'm still working on my writeup of last week's terrific Art and Heritage Disputes conference in Maastricht, but with no rest for the weary I'm looking ahead to ALI-CLE's annual Legal Issues in Museum Administration conference next week in Chicago. As usual, the program and faculty are world-class. Hope to see you there.
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Topics: Events, Legal Issues in Museum Adm, ALI-CLE
The FBI issued a press release today in which it states that with a “high degree” of confidence, it has identified the thieves responsible for the 1990 theft from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. This development is remarkable for what it says, and what it does not, and deserving of a skeptical view given its timing. The FBI release adds sufficient details to rise above the rumor mill, but it raises as many questions as it answers.
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Topics: Edgar Degas, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Gardner Heist, The Concert, Govaert Flinck, Chez Tortoni, 1990, Edouard Manet, La Sortie de Pesage, Anthony Amore, Rembrandt, Tom Mashberg, Vermeer, Three Mounted Jockeys, Program for an artistic soiree 1 & 2, March 18, Museums, Richard DesLauriers, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Theft, James “Whitey” Bulger, Cortege aux Environs de Florence, A Lady and Gentleman in Black, Landscape with Obelisk
On March 24-25, 2013, I will be attending the Art and Heritage Disputes at the University of Maastricht. The seminar website is here:
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Topics: cultural property, Anne Laure Bandle, David Carey Miller, Jos Van Beurden, Michail Risvas, Bruno S. Frey, Sebastian A. Green Martinez, Anne-Marie Carstens, Jan Hladik, Christa Roodt, Asoid Garcia-Marquez, Alessandro Chechi, Restitution, Craig Forrest, Athina Papaefstratiou Fouchard, Eleni Polymenopoulou, Yannick Radi, Christian Armbruester, S. I. Strong, University of Maastricht, Andrzej Jakubowski, Art and Heritage Disputes, Sabrina Urbinati
The First Circuit Court of Appeals has affirmed a win for the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Harvard University concerning possession of a number of Iranian antiquities. The ruling left open, however, some interesting questions about the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). In particular, the First Circuit did not have to rule on whether antiquities in a museum are “property” of a source country that could be used to satisfy an unrelated judgment, or whether a museum displaying an object from a foreign country makes the object “used in commercial activity” such that it is no longer immune from seizure under the FSIA.
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Topics: cultural property, Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, 28 U.S.C. § 1610, 22 U.S.C. § 2259, Rubin v. Islamic Republic of Iran, 116 Stat. 2322, Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, § 201 (a), Harvard University, Restitution, Foreign Sovereign Immunities, Antiquities, Immunity from Seizure Act, Museums, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Pub. L. No. 107-297
Backing off some of the more belligerent comments made recently by the Foreign Ministry, Russian President Vladimir Putin has nonetheless signalled that Russia has no plans to return the Chabad library to comply with a 2010 judgment or the more recent sanctions order. Both Reuters and the Art Newspaper reported that Putin proposed to store the Schneerson library in the newly built Jewish Museum in Moscow. Putin stated "The Schneerson Collection belongs to Russia. . . .If we now open a Pandora's box and start satisfying similar requests, there will be no end to these claims. Maybe one day we will be able to do this, but now we are absolutely not ready for this. This is impossible," Putin said." That statement simply begs the question of what the Pandora's box is that Putin fears. Russia has, for example, refused for years even to discuss cultural artifacts taken to the Soviet Union as the German army retreated in World War II. The more conciliatory tone is a marked change from recent threats to try to find the United States in default in retalation for the recent sanctions order, although it does little to address the fundamental dispute.
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Topics: Moscow Jewish Museum, Restitution, Schneerson library, Foreign Sovereign Immunities, Vladimir Putin, Chabad
In a story that gets more unusual with every new development, the Russian Foreign Ministry has reportedly recommended filing a lawsuit, in Russia, against the United States Library of Congress in response to last month’s contempt sanctions order by the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia arising out of Russia’s refusal to obey a judgment to return the Chabad Lubavitch library of Menachem Schneerson.
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Topics: Russian Times, Russian Foreign Ministry, sanctions, The Art Newspaper, Library of Congress, 22 U.S.C. § 2459, Foreign Sovereign Immunities, Litigation, Immunity from Seizure Act, Chabad, Sergey Lavrov
