The joint panel presentation by Sullivan & Worcester LLP’s Art and Museum Law Group (home of your Art Law Report) and Citi Private Bank next Wednesday, April 11, 2012 in Boston that I was scheduled to moderate with Cornelius J. Murray, III, Trust & Estates Practice Chair, Sullivan & Worcester LLP; Suzanne Gyorgy, Head of Art Advisory & Finance, Citi Private Bank; and Brian Bandler, Director, Wealth Planner, Citi Private Bank has been postponed.

The St. Louis Art Museum has defeated the federal goverment's efforts to seize the Egyptian Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer under U.S. customs laws.

The Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer is a funerary mask of an ancient Egyptian noblewoman. The St. Louis Art Museum purchased it from a dealer in 1998. Sometime later, the United States began to seek its seizure, arguing that it was stolen property. The museum sued the government in the first instance to seek a declaration that the attempts to seize the Mask should cease. The United States then brought a civil forfeiture action under U.S. customs laws (proceedings in which the object is the defendant, making the case United States v. The Mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer; it is left to the person claiming ownership to file a claim in which she bears the burden of proof). In its papers, the government essentially argued that the fact that the Mask had gone missing in Egypt by 1973 and then surfaced in a sale in the United States decades later, meant that it could not have been imported legally.

I can’t let today’s news about the Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin go unremarked. A center for art and culture since the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has apparently ordered vacated, with occupants carried out by force. Ironically, it’s really about a story about art and the absence of a legal framework, a building in the hottest part of the hottest city in Europe that no one seemed to own.

The House of Representatives approved the Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act on March 19, 2012, to remove the display of a work of art in the United States as basis to sue a foreign sovereign here. The law touches on important distinctions between immunity from suit—when a party cannot be sued at all—from immunity from seizure—when a particular object or asset cannot be seized.

Catherine Hickley of Bloomberg reports today from Berlin about a court-ordered return of more than 4,000 once owned by Hans Sachs, a Jewish dentist chased out of Nazi Germany. The Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) is Germany’s highest civil court, and handed down the decision.

Donn Zaretsky at the Art Law Blog (whose prior commentary on the case gives excellent analysis of the Commerce Clause and other issues) reports that the U.S. District Court issued a tentative ruling at a hearing on Monday to dismiss the California Resale Royalty Act cases against Sotheby's, Christie's and eBay (Chuck Close is one of the plaintiffs). No written order has come down, but we will report and analyze when it does. This is big news; for the moment the case docket indicates only that the hearing took place and that the judge took the matter under advisement.

Montgomery County Orphan’s Court Judge Stanley R. Ott, the presiding judge in the unsuccessful challenge to the Barnes Foundation’s move to Center City in Philadelphia has upheld his award of sanctions against the plaintiffs challenging the move. After a recent hearing, the judge awarded the Barnes $25,000 in attorneys' fees from the Friends of the Barnes, and a separate $15,000 form a lawyer who had filed a challenge in his own right.

I’ll be at the ALI-ABA Legal Issues in Museum Administration next week in San Francisco March 19-21. I’ve been perusing the coursebooks this morning, and as usual they do not disappoint. It promises to be a fascinating three days as always, and any time in San Francisco is well worth it. If you’ve been reading the Art Law Report and enjoy it, hate it, or have anything else to say about it and you'll be attending the conference, please say hello during the day or at the networking events.

Not sure who I am? I’ll be the one dressed like a lawyer.

I am delighted to announce a joint presentation by Sullivan & Worcester LLP’s Art and Museum Law Group (home of your Art Law Report) and Citi Private Bank. On April 11, 2012 here in Boston we will host a discussion of Art Advisory and Estate Planning. Panelists will include Cornelius J. Murray, III, Trust & Estates Practice Chair, Sullivan & Worcester LLP; Suzanne Gyorgy, Head of Art Advisory & Finance, Citi Private Bank; and Brian Bandler, Director, Wealth Planner, Citi Private Bank. The panelists will address the complex art needs of private clients, including the rules that organizations and donors must understand in order to maximize tax benefits and avoid unintended pitfalls. I will be there to moderate what I expect will be a fascinating discussion.

The Art and Museum Law Group issued today a client advisory on the implications of Golan v. Holder.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld in Golan v. Holder the constitutionality of a U.S. statute (§ 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)) that “restored” U.S. copyright protection to millions of foreign-authored works that, for much of the twentieth century, had none at all. The Court found no constitutional bar to making foreign works that once were free of copyright protection now subject to the full regime of rights. The decision raises far-reaching implications for anyone who has copied, sold, or otherwise published foreign works of the 20th century that were assumed to be in the public domain, and raises anew the importance of considering the various layers of copyright protection that follow a single work.