Katie and Steve discuss the recent decision by the New York Supreme Court granting the Manhattan District Attorney request for a turnover order directing the Art Institute of Chicago to return a drawing by Egon Schiele, “Russan War Prisoner,” that the museum acquired in 1966. Katie and Steve review the history of the ownership of the drawing by Fritz Grünbaum, a cabaret singer who was killed by the Nazis in 1941, and the legal proceedings involving his art collection leading up to this controversial decision.
Category: Uncategorized
The Problem of Sleepers
Steve and Katie speak with Swiss art lawyer Anne Laure Bandle about the subject of her book “The Sale of Misattributed Artworks and Antiques at Auction” – the problem of “sleepers,” or misattributed and undervalued works of art sold at auction. We all dream of buying a painting at a yard sale that we later discover to be worth millions of dollars. On this podcast, we discuss the market incentives and structures that prevent discovery of sleepers.
Updates on Art, Free Speech, and Government Censorship
Steve and Katie welcome back Professor Amy Adler to discuss the First Amendment’s free speech protections as they apply to artistic expression in the context of several recent incidents. Specifically, they discuss the police seizure of certain Sally Mann photographs from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in the context of obscenity and child pornography laws, the removal of the For Freedoms billboard depicting the march on Selma in Montgomery, Alabama, and the lawsuit about the Nirvana “Nevermind” album cover depicting a naked baby.
The Law of Stolen Art in Germany
Katie and Steve speak with renowned German art lawyer Dr. Katharina Garbers-von Boehm about the law of title in Germany as it applies to art, including the concepts of good and bad faith in considering ownership, the legal primacy of possession, and the doctrine of adverse possession that allows possessors of stolen property, like Nazi-looted art, to take good title after a certain number of years. They discuss differences under U.S. law, particularly with respect to stolen property, soft laws that encourage voluntary actions that the law may foreclose, and recent German law developments surrounding Nazi-looted art.
Who Should Control the Benin Bronzes
Katie and Steve speak with their colleague Eden Burgess and guest Dr. Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba, Curator of African Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and an expert in Benin Bronzes, about the artistic history of Benin City in current day Nigeria, the fate of the Benin Bronzes that dispersed around the world after the British invasion and looting of Benin Kingdom in 1897, and how we should think about ownership and possession of these valuable objects today.