UPDATE: NY's donor-friendly version of UPMIFA

Donn Zaretsky has posted on another article that accurately discusses the donor-friendly notice requirements under NY's version of UPMIFA. It also becomes apparent on reading the article how cumbersome it will be for institutions to comply with. For background see here.

Public photo archive of looted antiquities vital to eradicating grave problem of looting

A reader wrote to the Editor of The Art Newspaper this week calling for the need to have a public photo archive of looted antiquities to aide prospective buyers in their provenance research of potentially looted objects. When it comes to purchasing antiquities today, the volume of undocumented/ looted antiquities (the two terms have become synonymous) on the market is such that tainting an object's provenance by way of publishing photos of similar/identical looted objects will in most cases ensure it does indeed remain unsold. The importance of this reality goes beyond an individual prospective buyer avoiding the purchase of illicit objects -- ensuring that looted antiquities remain unsold is crucial to eradicating looting itself. Results of ethnographic studies around the world have shown that looting is a profit-making business that is the direct result of market demand (see Patty Gerstenblith article) and with the antiquities market being valued at $2-6 billion annually, the stakes are high. The causal link between market demand and looting has, in my opinion, been conclusively proven (as I've previously written in the context of Marion True's trial) and one highly effective way of controlling market demand is through a public photo archive of looted artworks. In fact, this method is probably more effective at combating looting than the body of piecemeal legislation enacted in the US over the last decade with a view to deterring trade in illicit art (notably, the NSPA, the ARPA and the CPIA). The Art Loss Register is the obvious candidate to fulfill the mission of public archive and I would urge it to expand the scope of its valuable services to include this much-needed archive (to some extent it already does as looted artworks are by definition stolen). Much of our understanding of the evolution of human civilization has been attributed to stratigraphic excavation and as Patty Gerstenblith points out, "this full body of contextualized information is a destructible, non-renewable cultural resource," forever destroyed by looters. Not to mention the harm caused to the objects themselves and the distortions to the historical record resulting from flooding the market with undocumented artworks.

LINKS

• PARIS. Artworld Salon reports on the Deloitte "Art & Finance" conference held at the end of last month. It highlights three themes: I agree with the first, disagree with the second and would modify the third. The final paragraph is by far the most astute: "before we continue to develop art into an investment vehicle (in whatever way), let's take a step back and think about what makes art different to other assets and markets, not what makes it similar" (my own emphasis added).
•  "Whose painting is it anyway?" Pop quiz on what constitutes good title to art.
• LONDON. Another deferral of an export license to allow public instutions to match the sale price and keep the art in the UK. At least this case involves a painting by "simply the greatest British painter of the 19th century" which foreseeably meets the Waverely Criteria (unlike the case of the export of the Fatimid ewer where it's far less obvious).

UPDATE: Record-breaking sale of Quianlong fish vase was the "product of a perfect storm of new money, national pride, and unique historical cachet"

LONDON. This blog previously reported the staggering $85.9m sale of a Qianlong-era fish vase at Bainbridges auction house in London. Now Art Info has an interesting article on the "7 reasons why a gaudy fish vase broke a world record for Chinese Art." The last paragraph considers the alternative of "market juicing" as the reason behind the high price tag: "perhaps (goes the theory) there was collusion by interested parties in China -- auction houses or others -- who aimed to boost the market in advance of the auction season which is just about to begin in China... "If it was really a patriotic act, what's the point in boosting the price? Fifty times higher than the estimate smells more like they were cooking the price than fighting for a piece of artwork they like.""

The Beuys case's wider significance for the relationship between "documentation" and "performance"

A German court has ruled that the Museum Schloss Moyland in North Rhine-Westphalia may not lawfully display a collection of its photographs of the late Joseph Beuys performing in 1964. According to The Art Newspaper, "the judge ruled that the pictures of the performance were an “incorrect deformation of the original performance” and by exhibiting them the museum had violated Beuys’ copyright." Since the performance was never filmed and no other photographs were taken, it's a wonder how the court came to the conclusion that the photographs were not true to the original performance, such conclusion and the resultant prohibition against their display also implying a piece of art historical material will be inaccessible to the public for the foreseeable future. The case highlights the problematic relationship between "documentation" and "performance" and the central issue of who controls the documentation of an artistic performance -- the artist, the photographer, the artist’s estate or the museum?

The ruling demands close scrutiny from both a factual and a legal perspective. On the one hand, the alleged facts are that Beuys granted the photographer, Tischer, permission to document the performance though no explicit authorization was given to subsequently display or publish the photographs. According to the museum's director, the late artist "always wanted photographers at his performances so his work could reach a wider audience" and it seems entirely reasonable for the museum to have assumed it was implicitly authorized to display the photographs it was expressly permitted to take. Why else would the photographs have been taken if not to be publicly displayed? The fact that the German news agency PDA has not been similarly restricted in the display of its photographs of Beuys' performances seems at odds with the ruling's purported premise: the artist's copyright (however, the (legal?) requirement of asking a late artist's estate for permission to display unpublished photographs may explain this). On the other hand, the court's expansive view of the performing artist's right not only stands in stark contrast to the "limited protection" of performing artists in other jurisdictions (as noted in a second article on the legal significance of the Beuys case) but also in light of the photographer's right to freedom of expression under the European Convention of Human Rights (by which German courts are bound). Can it really be the case that copyright under German law is so expansive as to not require the court to engage in a balancing of competing rights?

UPDATE: Warhol Foundation drops counterclaim against Joe Simon

According to Businessweek, "the Foundation [has] decided not to try to recover its own legal costs from the collector because a search turned up no assets." That's $7 million in legal costs that could have gone towards the Foundation's "charitable mission of promoting the visual arts and preserving the legacy of Andy Warhol."

For background, click here.