Posted on: September 22, 2015 by Alexander Herman
An important legal settlement has been reached between the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the American branch of an Armenian Church. The dispute, which had dragged on for a number of years, involved eight illustrated manuscript pages that had once been part of the Zeyt’un Gospels but which had been separated from the rest of the […]
Posted on: August 28, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Last week, the Banksy-organised theme park known as Dismaland opened in the English seaside town of Weston-super-mare, billed specifically as a place ‘unsuitable for children’. The park has already been reported and commented on thoroughly in the media, notably by The Guardian and in Boodle Hatfield’s blog, for its twist on traditional notions of amusement parks and family-friendly enjoyment. Here […]
Posted on: August 19, 2015 by Alexander Herman
A painting was stolen in 1991. It was a work referred to as Girl in Sunlight by Australian impressionist Rupert Bunny (see below). It was owned by James Watt from Melbourne. Watt tried to recover the painting, but there was nothing he could do. He died in 1993. In May 2010 the painting was seized by the […]
Posted on: August 14, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Having finished the IAL refresher course in Melbourne this week (with the full Diploma in Law and Collections Management course starting next Monday), it has become clear yet again the difficulties which museums face when dealing with certain objects in their collections. The difficulties stem from an uncertainty as to whether an object has been given (‘gifted’ or donated) to […]
Posted on: July 21, 2015 by Alexander Herman
There was an interesting development last week in the area of copyright exceptions in the UK. A judge of the High Court quashed (i.e. nullified or rendered inoperable) the exception introduced by the Government last October through the Personal Copies for Private Use Regulations 2014. This is quite something. The courts, through judicial review, are overturning a governmental mechanism which had allowed […]
Posted on: July 17, 2015 by Alexander Herman
The dispute before the California courts between the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation and the descendants of Lily Cassirer Neubauer has now entered its second decade. Neubauer was forced to sell a painting by Pissarro before fleeing Germany in 1939 and her heirs now claim that it should be returned to them from the Spanish Foundation, the painting’s current possessor. The action brought […]
Posted on: May 31, 2015 by Alexander Herman
The disputed collection that had once belonged to the great Irish dealer and collector Sir Hugh Lane has once again made the headlines. Lane died one hundred years ago this month on the Lusitania when the ship was sunk by German U-boats on its journey from New York to Liverpool. He had put together a fantastic art […]
Posted on: February 25, 2015 by Alexander Herman
It is an iconic work by the great Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși (pronounced, in true Romanian form, as ‘Brancoush’). It is a sculpture of a naked woman with her arms folded, her knees pulled close. It is entitled The Wisdom of the Earth. And now it is at the centre of yet another legal ‘dispute’ involving the Romanian state and […]