Cant (UPDATED)

The other big news this week was that "Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr is considering whether the multibillion-dollar collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts should be considered city assets that potentially could be sold to cover about $15 billion in debt."

You can guess the reaction in the art world, I don't have to bother linking to anything.  But I was amused by this story in today's Times under the headline, "Collection of Detroit Institute of Arts Cannot Be Sold, Its Director Says."

Got that?  Cannot be sold.

Not shouldn't be sold.  Cannot be sold.

Why "can't" it be sold?  Because it's held in the "public trust," of course.  (Tell me again ....)

Now, in fairness to the museum's director, Graham Beal, the quotes attributed to him in the story don't support that headline.  He says:

"We believe that that kind of action — diminishing our collection, the cultural value — would not be in the long-term interest."

That sounds like a "shouldn't" statement, not a "can't" statement, and that's where the conversation has to take place.  If you think selling any of the art is a bad idea, given all of the relevant circumstances, then make the case.  But nobody gets to chant the magic words "public trust" and end the discussion.

The works absolutely can be sold; as we've seen repeatedly, museums sell work all the time (even some museums in Detroit).  The question is whether they should, and what happens -- to the public in whose trust they are held -- if they are not.

UPDATE:  Tell me again about the public trust.

"The artwork Rosales sold appears to be as fake as her story about the clients she claimed to represent."

I was out of town this week, but while I was away, the big news was that federal prosecutors charged Glafira Rosales, who is at the center of the Knoedler mess, with tax fraud.  The New York Times has all the details here.  The criminal complaint is here.  Excellent analysis at Jack Townsend's Federal Tax Crimes blog here.

"So while Cariou v. Prince can rightly be considered a victory for appropriation art to some extent ..."

". . . what it is not is a victory for clarity, guidance and certainty in the very murky area of fair use and 'transformativeness.'"

Richard Dorment on the Warhol Foundation

In the New York Review of Books.

Six of one

Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento responds to my post yesterday on his latest post on Prince-Cariou.

I wasn't really disagreeing with him.  It's hard to say whether things were better or worse pre-Prince.  Sergio says we're left now with a fair use clusterfark, which is true.  But we had a fair use clusterfark before Prince.  You'd need a very finely tuned clusterfark detector to be able to measure the difference.

"Since the full price of artworks donated to charity are not tax deductible for the artist, new records are a major incentive for their participation."

Dan Duray on last night's Leonardo DiCaprio-organized charity auction.

Much Better Than The Impractical Advice Panel

"Practical Advice on Handling Legal Issues Confronting the Art World Today":  New York City Bar Association, May 21, 6:00-9:00 pm.

"So although many in the art world and the art law world are championing the latest Second Circuit flop, what they should be asking is how the hell are we supposed to analyze fair use post-Cariou."

Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento is still not happy with the Prince decision:  "This isn’t about chilling speech; it’s about knowing a good thing when you have it. The pre-Cariou test elaborated by Judge Batts simply asked that we question the appropriating artist on what her purpose was in appropriating copyrighted work. Now that that fish has been gutted to the bone, all we art lawyers are left with is uncertainty and guess-work."

I'm not sure we had much more than that pre-Cariou . . .

Detroit is broke

Details here.  Maybe they should try a millage?

"Why Can’t We Take Pictures in Art Museums?" (UPDATED)

Carolina Miranda explores in ARTnews.

UPDATE:  Some thoughts from Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento.

"It is hard to imagine a business more custom-made for money laundering" (UPDATED 3X)

Patricia Cohen has a front-page story in today's New York Times on the increase in art-related money laundering.

The Art Market Monitor says it's "an open secret in the art world."

UPDATE:  Charlotte Burns and Melanie Gerlis have a related story in The Art Newspaper.

UPDATE 2:  Fox Rothschild's Daniel Schnapp:  "One important question is whether an innocent purchaser or seller of laundered art has any right to receive back the work or the funds used in the sale of the work. Certainly a major concern would be if the art is forfeited by the government.   The artwork is then potentially subject to the criminal proceedings against the accused money launderer and a long delay in recovering either the work or the funds may be inevitable."

UPDATE 3:  Asher Edelman comments:  "The article’s focus is that there are no safeguards on money laundering in the art market. However, the Times is mistaken. The art market and its participants are subject to the same money laundering, tax evasion, fraud, and other laws applying to transactions as any other business."

"While of course we're glad that the individual artist, Richard Prince in this case, has had the aesthetic merit of his work validated ..."

". . . it does very little to stop the chilling effect that we're already seeing on any other artist, collector, or museum."

Virginia Rutledge, quoted here.

Are there too many nonprofits?

Slate's Matthew Yglesias:  "Due to the progressive rate structure of the income tax, these tax deductions are very much a way of increasing the social and political clout of the rich and don't seem to inspire a ton of charity in the sense of helping poor people."

Fielder's Choice

I've been meaning to get to the news about the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.  It's the usual story -- the museum is deeply in debt, faces millions of dollars in budget cuts, including a new round of layoffs, this time including tenured scientists who will find it "very, very hard" to find new jobs -- but, while it's fine for them to sell off their entire collection of paintings by George Catlin and use the proceeds to "buy [more] artifacts," it would be a mortal sin to use those same proceeds for anything else.

And, on NPR, we hear from Carroll Joynes of the University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center, who tells us "what make deaccessioning so tricky":  one, "[i]t makes donors in the future fear for the security of the things they leave to the organization"; and two, it "seems to many to skirt with a breaking of a trust or a vow to take these things into permanent protection for future generations."

But it never seems to occur to anyone to ask why those same concerns didn't apply to, for example, the sale of the museum's entire collection of Catlin paintings.  Did that not make donors in the future fear for the security of the things they leave to the organization?  Did that not skirt with a breaking of a trust or a vow to take those things into permanent protection for future generations?

Why don't the reporters ever call them on the inconsistency?

"In the press info for the commercial, Inversion, Havel, and Ruck are mentioned as inspirations."

Houston Chronicle:  Artists behind iconic Houston sculpture sue Honda over ad.

Idea or expression?

And, if the latter, is it a fair use because it has a "different purpose" than the original (i.e., to sell cars)?

Cariou will be seeking rehearing en banc

Laura Gilbert has the story in The Art Newspaper.

What if they used the razing proceeds to buy more museums?

"The Museum of Modern Art said on Thursday that it would reconsider its decision to demolish its next-door neighbor, the former home of the American Folk Art Museum."

"The saga that never ends." (UPDATED)

"Eugenia and Nicholas Taubman are suing the Knoedler Gallery, Michael Hammer, Ann Freedman, Glafira Rosales and Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz alleging they were sold a fake Clyfford Still for $4.3 million."

UPDATE:  More from Patricia Cohen in the NYT.