Posted on: January 10, 2020 by Julia Rodrigues Casella Hommes
Important changes are imminent for the art market as the 5th EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive enters into force in the UK this Friday, the 10th of January 2020. The directive has been hurriedly transposed into UK law through the Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2019, which were laid before Parliament on the 20th […]
Posted on: December 26, 2019 by Alexander Herman
If nothing else, the end of a calendar year offers the chance to step back and review the larger developments in a particular area or field. This is certainly true about the world of art and cultural heritage law where it can often be hard to see the forest for the trees. So many legal […]
Posted on: December 2, 2019 by Charlotte Dunn
Legal cases involving questions of authenticity, attribution and provenance are generally not easily determined. However, in a recent Canadian case, the Court of Appeal for Ontario applied contract law to tackle (or avoid) the issue. The case involved a painting, entitled Spirit Energy of Mother Earth, purportedly by the renowned First Nations artist, Norval Morrisseau. […]
Posted on: November 21, 2019 by Adam Jomeen
Banksy’s well-known quip from 2005 that “Copyright is for losers ©TM” is perhaps more widely attributed than many of his artworks. Disputes with an Italian museum and a UK greetings card company over the past year suggest a shift, however, in his historically laissez-faire attitude to the commercialisation of his work by unauthorised third parties. […]
Posted on: November 19, 2019 by Charlotte Dunn
As previously noted in the IAL blog, the recent challenge to the Ivory Act 2018 has continued an ongoing debate over the UK government’s decision to impose a stricter ban on the trade in elephant ivory. (See earlier reports here and here). On the 5th of November 2019, Mr Justice Jay handed down his High […]
Posted on: November 1, 2019 by Charlotte Dunn
Earlier this month, the High Court in Manchester wound up two companies which had received just under £1million from investors, between October 2018 and June 2019, as part of a fraudulent art investment scheme. The two companies involved were Gem Tobin Ltd, located in Cheshire, and Dionysus Design Services Ltd, located in York. The court’s […]
Posted on: October 4, 2019 by Julia Rodrigues Casella Hommes
September was, as usual, an eventful month for the art world and the cultural heritage sector. After the lull of the summer months, there were a number of interesting events and developments that took place both in the UK and abroad. Today, we will be looking at two developments that were important from a collections […]
Posted on: September 19, 2019 by Julia Rodrigues Casella Hommes
In what at first glance seems like a distant topic for cultural heritage and art law, the ongoing trade war between the US and China has escalated further with clear implications for the art market and many other countries as well. We have previously covered this topic here and here, when last year the threat […]
Posted on: August 23, 2019 by Stephanie Drawdy
Fritz Grünbaum was a clear target for the Nazis. He was a Jewish law school graduate and decorated World War I veteran turned pacifist and an outspoken man of the arts with a platform as a Viennese cabaret performer. On the day Hitler invaded Vienna, he entertained nightclub guests as he groped onto a darkened […]
Posted on: July 29, 2019 by Julia Rodrigues Casella Hommes
The debate on the elephant ivory ban in the UK, which we have previously covered on the IAL blog here and here, seemed to have reached a conclusion as the 2018 Ivory Act received royal assent in late December last year. However, since then there have been two important developments. Firstly, activists have been campaigning […]