Posted on: October 8, 2019 by Alexander Herman
The recent case before the German Advisory Commission involving the painting Uhlans on the March by Hans von Marées was a first of its kind on a number of counts. The Commission is the body that hears claims for the restitution of Nazi-looted artworks. The claim had been brought in 2017 by the beneficiaries of […]
Posted on: November 9, 2018 by Alexander Herman
A big splash was made when a lot sold at Christie’s New York last month for $432,500. That sort of amount is usually small change for the major international auction house, but not when it comes to a particular sort of artwork: one made by artificial intelligence (or AI). In fact, this was reported to […]
Posted on: February 9, 2018 by Alexander Herman
The story begins 150 years ago. In 1868, deep in the deserts of east Africa, a British expedition led by General Robert Napier, was attacking the capital of the Abyssinian Empire, Maqdala, ruled over by King Tewodros. The British were looking to teach Tewodros a lesson for having imprisoned a number of British envoys and […]
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: 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: April 8, 2015 by Alexander Herman
Newspapers around the globe last week reported on the story of a Palestinian man from Gaza, Rabie Dardouna, who had unwittingly sold a door with a Banksy mural on it. Banksy had reportedly taken a tour of Gaza following the 2014 Israel-Gaza War and put up a number of characteristic works on bombed-out buildings. This […]
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 […]
Posted on: December 16, 2014 by Alexander Herman
Much has been made in the last while about the loan of the Ilissus statue from the British Museum to the Hermitage in Putin’s St Petersburg. But relatively little coverage has been given to a number of loans from 21 Greek museums for a series of shows across North America over the next year. The exhibition The Greeks […]