Posted on: April 18, 2018 by Alexander Herman
As reported earlier this month, the National Gallery of Canada has plans to sell a painting from its collection by artist Marc Chagall at Christie’s in New York on 15 May. The funds will be used to acquire a work by Jacques-Louis David, which was confirmed this week by the Gallery. The Chagall piece on […]
Posted on: February 28, 2018 by Alexander Herman
We were fortunate enough to be able to take the students from the LLM programme in Art, Business and Law to the V&A to hear the museum’s in-house solicitor, Anthony Misquitta, speak about the various legal issues faced by the institution on a daily basis. This covered things like copyright and digitisation, trade mark issues […]
Posted on: November 28, 2017 by Alexander Herman and Holly Woodhouse
Last month, on the 21st of October, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (along with local police) seized an ancient Achaemenid Persian bas-relief from the European Fine Art Fair at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. The item was being offered for sale by the London-based art dealer Robert Wace for roughly $1.2 million. The […]
Posted on: November 24, 2017 by Alexander Herman
The Institute of Art & Law was in Doha, Qatar last week providing an in-house training course on art, law and collections management for Qatar Museums, the governmental body that oversees the state-owned museums in the small Persian Gulf state. The course included one day on intellectual property and collections, another on contracts, acquisitions and […]
Posted on: August 30, 2017 by IAL Admin
A UK man, Toby Robyns, was apprehended ten days ago by Turkish authorities, as he tried to leave Turkey with a dozen coins. He had found the coins with his children on the seabed while snorkelling. He is still in prison, awaiting a decision by the Turkish courts. Our Assistant Director, Alexander Herman, was interviewed […]
Posted on: May 16, 2016 by Alexander Herman
My aunt, Gabrielle de Montmollin, a photographer and artist in Canada, is currently exhibiting her work in Toronto. I thought the show would be a good opportunity to discuss some of the copyright issues raised by her artistic approach. In particular, it serves as a way to explore a relatively new exception existing under Canadian […]
Posted on: May 11, 2016 by Alexander Herman
An important piece of legislation, brought into force around the time of the UK’s accession to the UNESCO 1970 Convention in 2002, has at last been used as the basis for a conviction. The statute, the Dealing in Cultural Objects (Offences) Act 2003, sets out an offence for dishonestly dealing in tainted cultural objects. The term ‘tainted’ for […]
Posted on: April 30, 2016 by Alexander Herman
Many of you will remember that street artist Stik, who spoke at our 28 November 2015 Study Forum, was engaged in a dispute with a notable West London gallery for the return of a mural he had helped create for a local community in Gdansk, Poland in 2011. Well, there is now some more news […]
Posted on: April 15, 2016 by Alexander Herman
Since we last reported on the matter, there have been some (potentially positive) developments on the issue of the Australian Aboriginal bark etchings in the collection of the British Museum being claimed by descendants of the Dja Dja Wurrung people who had initially made them in the mid 19th century. An article by Paul Daley in the Guardian from […]
Posted on: April 12, 2016 by Alexander Herman
I was lucky enough to attend the Australasian Registrars Committee annual conference last month, a two-part affair taking place in Sydney on 18th March and Auckland on 21st March, in order to present a paper on museums, mass digitisation and copyright. The events were held at two stunning locations: Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art on Circular Quay between the Harbour […]