Who owns Henry Moore's "Knife Edge Two Piece"?

LONDON. In 1967, Henry Moore and the Contemporary Art Society donated Knife Edge Two Piece (1962-65) to the United Kingdom. The bronze sculpture has since stood directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, admired by millions either in person or through its televised appearances in the background of news programs and becoming somewhat of a national emblem. However, the work is "badly discloured and covered with incised graffiti" and because to date it has not been possible to establish its legal owner, no one will assume responsibility for the restoration of the work. Another unfortunate consequence of this apparent legal loophole is the inability of the British Council to loan Knife Edge Two Piece for display in international exhibitions such as the Moore retrospective at the Kremlin in Moscow. According to The Art Newspaper, the British Council could not determine to whom the loan request should be addressed "though it now seems that there might have been no legal impediment to prevent the Council from simply sending the sculpture to Russia." The trade publication meticulously followed the "paper trail" in an attempt to reveal who owned the sculpture but to no avail.

At this point, it's imperative that legal advice be sought (question is, by whom) to put this matter to rest and restore the work to its intended state. But could it be the case that no one in fact owns the work? When a person owns property, whether real or personal, his/her testament or, if the person dies intestate, the relevant jurisdiction's intestacy laws (the Intestacy Rules in England and Wales), establish who the successor owner is or owners are. Yet when it's a non-human legal person that owns property, the situation is arguably quite different. Perhaps the Crown is the residuary taker as under intestacy though that likely wouldn't solve the question of which public body is ultimately responsible. Despite Moore's seemingly erroneous recordation of the City of London as the owner of the gifted sculpture, much of the evidence points to the City of Westminster as being the recipient and caretaker of the work: "both the Contemporary Art Society and the Henry Moore Foundation said that their records showed that it is owned by the City of Westminster (which is recorded in the official Moore catalogue raisonné)" and Abingdon Street Gardens -- where the work has stood since 1967 -- are owned by the City of Westminster. Why it is that Westminster Council refuted ownership is unclear but surely that must be the starting point of the next forensic expedition to establish who owns Knife Edge Two Piece.

If it's too good to be true, it probably is

FRANCE. Remember that post about the electrician who was gifted 271 works by Picasso for a mere 3-years' worth of services rendered? Last December, French authorities seized the never-before-seen, unsigned and undated collages, sketches and prints pending investigation of their provenance and prosecutors have now charged the 71-year old and his wife with handling stolen goods. Can't say I'm that surprised, are you?

UPDATE: Robert Wylde v. Gagosian Gallery, Inc.

"The Innocent Eye Test," by Mark Tansey (1981)

The FT.com has reported that the Metropolitan Museum's website listed the Mark Tansey painting the subject of the recently filed claim against Gagosian gallery as "Partial and Promised Gift of Jan Cowles and Charles Cowles." And indeed it does -- here is the direct link. Last week, a spokesperson for Gagosian made a statement saying the gallery would "vigorously" defend the action and that Charles Cowles had "represented that he had clear title to the painting."



But shouldn't the gallery have done due diligence (granted, delicately) at the very least to confirm that its client had title to sell the consigned painting? Had they made even basic inquiries about the provenance of the painting the connection to the Met would have been revealed and a simple search of their website would have revealed the museum's interest in the painting. Surely the gallery doesn't just take representations of title made by prospective clients at face value (even if the seller is Charles Cowles)? The suit (which also comprises a claim over a cancelled sale of a Richard Prince nurse painting) will shed much-needed light on the inner workings of what is widely considered to be the most successful gallery in the world.

For background on the torts/property/fraud action brought by Robert Wylde against the Gagosian gallery see here.

LINKS

• NEW YORK. "Collector sues Gagosian Gallery for selling him a painting partially owned by Met." Previous owner Charles Cowles (former publisher of Artforum and longtime dealer) thought he "could use the money" and "now it's a big mess"!
• NEW YORK. The latest case of double standards in the deaccessioning debate, as Donn Zaretsky rightfully points out.
• LONDON. Christie's chief operating officer Lisa King resigns after 15 years at the company. This is the second major shake-up in the management of the auction house since it named (not uncontroversially) former publishing exec Steven Murphy as the new CEO last September.
• PARIS. "He was not saying that the footage was taken from my films; he was calling it his own work of art.” Court awards Marina Abramovic €75,000 in damages and names her co-author of the film Balkan Baroque (1998). Contrast with the outcome in the Dutch litigation where contract governed the relationship between the parties.
• BENTOVILLE, AR. Judith H. Dobrzynski  on the latest plans for Crystal Bridges' galleries. [Cf. Fisk litigation and last update here].
• Amusing: art fair heaven and hell.

"Neither condemned nor vindicated"

In a previous post last October, this blog reported on how a court in Rome had ruled that the statute of limitations had run on the two criminal charges brought against the former Getty Museum curator Marion True. While the proceedings were a vitally important wake-up call to those operating in the antiquities market, I personally found it exceedingly unfair that True should have been the one to pay the price for the widespread illicit practices so many were engaging in (also, from a legal perspective, the charges were inherently flawed as noted in the post linked above).

Now The Art Newspaper has published Marion True's own account of her trial or lack thereof. True opens up about why she chose not to waive the statute of limitations and wonders why the Italian government decided to mount such an aggressive attack on an institution and a curator with a purported long history of tightening antiquities acquisition policices. Admittedly, the whole affair was hugely politicised and the Italian authorities should probably have simply asked for the return of the disputed objects as Marion True argues. But if they'd done that then the problem of looting and trafficking in illicit antiquities would not have received the international media attention it desperately needed.

See also Paolo Giorgio Ferri, former prosecutor involved in True's case, on the "scourge of looting."

Marion True, the scapegoat...

We will never know whether Marion True knowingly "acquired" or conspired to "traffic in" looted antiquities now that a court in Rome has ruled that the statute of limitations on the two criminal charges brought against the longtime curator had expired. The trial had continued on-and-off for five years during which time the prosecution presented its arguments to the court and called witnesses "who, according to Italian court procedure, were rarely subject to cross-examination." This, together with the fact that the defense never made its case nor did the court ever reach a verdict, means it's virtually impossible to draw any solid, substantiated conclusions with respect to the defendant and the specific allegations made against her. Furthermore, whatever limited conclusions can be drawn these have to be at least partially discounted given the politicization of the proceedings as a result of the Italian government's purported use of the True trial as a platform for its efforts to reclaim antiquities from major American museums. I say "purported use" because my understanding was always that the claims made by the Italian authorities had actually largely been "ethical" rather than "legal" but that the distinction had proven irrelevant in practice because US institutions perceived the claims as legal due to the hugely incriminating evidence found at the Geneva warehouse of Giacomo de Medici (convicted antiquities smuggler and alleged associate of Robert Hecht, Marion True's co-defendant and the dealer she transacted with). Marion True herself discusses, among other things, the "gigantic effect" the trial had on American museums, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, in an interview she gave The New Yorker on her "trial and ordeal."

Yet despite no verdict and no airing of the defense, the significance of the case cannot be overstated: it marks the culmination of decades of (unethical, if not illegal) acquisitions by museums (dealers and collectors too) of antiquities of unknown or dubious provenance. It's long been the case that market participants have simultaneously acknowledged the prevalence of looted antiquities in the market while routinely dealing in ancient artifacts that lack adequate provenance and denying the causal link between market demand and the growing profit-making business of looting (evidence of the causal link is practically conclusive). The True trial illustrates this intolerable reality perfectly - the pervasiveness of appallingly low standards in acquisitions of antiquities has been such in the last 20 years that either Marion True thought she could get away with it or even a curator of her knowledge and experience (she served as curator of antiquities at the Getty from 1986 to 2005) could not distinguish between an insufficiently documented antiquity and an illicit one. As the director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Maxwell L. Anderson, said, Marion True was being indicted "for what was a practice of American museums."

That a single curator has had to "carry the burden" for the practices of a board of trustees that was fully aware of the risks the acquisitions entailed and approved them nonetheless only to condone them later is undoubtedly unfair, not to mention the fact that the charges were anomalous from the outset since as a curator, True was never the recipient of the objects in dispute- the objects were acquired by the board of trustees on behalf of the Getty museum. However, I want to tell Marion True that her five year-ordeal was not completely in vain. Yes the costs of the litigation were exceedingly high- the personal costs to the defendant as well as the costs associated with the intimidation of American museums by the Italian authorities and the less-than-favorable agreements that resulted- but there were benefits too. In 2008, for example, the Association of Art Museum Directors adopted stricter guidelines for acquisitions of antiquities and, above all, the trial has served as a deafeningly loud "wake-up call" to museums in the US (and, ehem, around the world) that BUYING UNDOCUMENTED OR INSUFFICIENTLY DOCUMENTED ANTIQUITIES HAS GOT TO STOP.