Early last week the online auctioneer Paddle 8 filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York, on the heels of a recent lawsuit demanding payment for works of art sold at a charitable auction last...more
The Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, or SPK) in Berlin announced that it had agreed to restitute a 1537 painting of the biblical figure Lot by Hans Baldung Grien to the heirs of Hans...more
1/23/2020
/ Appraisal ,
Art Collections ,
Art Dealers ,
Cultural Artifacts ,
Fair Market Value ,
Fine Art ,
Germany ,
Heirs ,
Museums ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Restitution ,
Stolen Goods
While the incomparable Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd does not take place in Dresden, that is where today brought news of a robbery at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the State...more
My client Alexander Khochinsky is safely back in the United States after an eight-month ordeal spurred by Poland’s retaliation for his assertion of restitution for his mother’s property lost in Poland during the Holocaust....more
10/22/2019
/ Bad Faith ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Extradition ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Foreign Sovereigns ,
International Litigation ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Poland ,
Popular ,
Probable Cause ,
Restitution ,
Retaliatory Arrests ,
Stolen Goods
The Appellate Division First Department in New York has affirmed the trial court’s ruling in Reif v. Nagy that the heirs of Viennese actor and Holocaust victim Franz Friedrich (Fritz) Grünbaum are entitled to the return of...more
7/12/2019
/ Appeals ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA) ,
Germany ,
Good Faith ,
HEAR Act ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Power of Attorney ,
Restitution ,
Statute of Limitations ,
Successors
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today dismissed the petition to rehear en banc last year’s landmark ruling that the heirs of the art dealers who sold the Guelph Treasure (or Welfenschatz) may pursue their...more
The sprawling saga of the M. Knoedler & Co. Gallery forgery scandal is approaching a full decade since the storied gallery closed abruptly in 2011 (fuller background further below). The last pending civil suit related to the...more
5/14/2019
/ Alter Ego ,
Corporate Veil ,
Delaware General Corporation Law ,
Fine Art ,
Forgery ,
Fraudulent Concealment ,
Guilty Pleas ,
Limited Liability Company (LLC) ,
Paintings Sculptures and Engravings ,
Personal Liability ,
Piercing the Corporate Veil ,
Shareholders
One of the longest-running court cases in the United States about art looted by the Nazis has been decided in favor of the current possessor, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, an instrumentality of the Kingdom of...more
Debate has peaked in the last year or so about the treatment and possible restitution of so-called colonial artifacts in Western (i.e., European and North American) museums. The conversation is important for many reasons, but...more
Alexander Khochinsky, the son of a Polish Jew who fled her home just steps ahead of the German invasion in 1941, was detained at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport yesterday. The current detention parallels Poland’s previous...more
2/27/2019
/ Bad Faith ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Extradition ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereigns ,
International Litigation ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Poland ,
Probable Cause ,
Restitution ,
Retaliatory Arrests ,
Stolen Goods
This fall marks the 20th anniversary of the Washington Conference on Nazi-Era Assets and the corollary Washington Principles on Nazi-confiscated Art that have driven much of the conversation since then. Apollo magazine...more
The New York Times reported yesterday that the German Lost Art Foundation had removed several paintings once owned by the Viennese cabaret actor Fritz Grünbaum from the Lost Art database. While the history of these objects is...more
After four months of silence, the Berkshire Museum suddenly demanded last week that my clients dismiss their still-pending lawsuit over the governance of the museum by claiming that the April decision by the Single Justice of...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld the judgment against Marei von Saher on her claims against the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena to recover Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder. The Cranachs...more
I am pleased to be taking part in a symposium at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles on September 26, 2018, “The Future of Nazi Looted Art Recovery in the US and Abroad.” Presented by Cypress LLP and the Sotheby’s Institute of...more
(WASHINGTON-July 10, 2018) The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has affirmed the right of the heirs to the so-called Guelph Treasure (known in German as the Welfenschatz) to seek restitution in U.S. courts for the...more
(WASHINGTON, D.C.-June 27, 2018) Alexander Khochinsky, the son of a Polish Jew who fled her home just steps ahead of the German invasion in 1941, has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia...more
6/28/2018
/ Bad Faith ,
Criminal Prosecution ,
Extradition ,
Extraterritoriality Rules ,
Fine Art ,
Foreign Sovereigns ,
International Litigation ,
Nazi Looted Art ,
Poland ,
Probable Cause ,
Restitution ,
Retaliatory Arrests ,
Stolen Goods
I am pleased to report on the outcome of a matter we announced in February. After a disagreement with the City of Palo Alto (California) about her sculpture Digital DNA, Sullivan & Worcester LLP client Adriana Varella has...more
The decision by a New York court last month in favor of the Agnes Martin Catalogue Raisonné (AMCR) in a lawsuit by the Mayor Gallery Ltd in the United Kingdom is the latest in a series of disputes over the practice of...more
Casting aspersions about the art market is a popular pastime. And no doubt there is much about the commercial art world that invites this criticism, not least a tendency towards secrecy (or discretion, depending whom you...more
Since the passage in 2016 of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act, many commenters (here included) have grappled with what the implications of the law will be on the scope and frequency of future claims. Even as...more
(Boston, MA, February 26, 2018) Sullivan & Worcester LLP clients and Berkshire Museum members James Hatt, Kristin Hatt, and Elizabeth Weinberg filed today a brief with the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts asking the...more
(Boston, MA, February 13, 2018) Sullivan & Worcester LLP clients and Berkshire Museum members James Hatt, Kristin Hatt, and Elizabeth Weinberg sharply denounced today the agreement that was announced Friday evening between...more
Sullivan & Worcester LLP has taken action on behalf of its client, artist Adriana Varella, to protect her sculpture Digital DNA from removal and destruction by the City of Palo Alto, California. Digital DNA has stood in the...more
(Boston, MA, January 16, 2018) Sullivan & Worcester LLP has filed its papers in the appeal by its clients, the members of the Berkshire Museum who sued to enjoin the museum’s sale of 40 works of art and sculpture. The appeal...more