Displaying items by tag: ruling

A federal appeals court has sided with Yale University in a dispute over the ownership of a $200 million Vincent van Gogh painting.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld a 2014 ruling by a lower court that dismissed the claims of Pierre Konowaloff. He said the Dutch painter’s “The Night Cafe” was stolen from his family during the Russian Revolution.

A district court in Düsseldorf ruled on Tuesday that German art adviser Helge Achenbach must pay €19.4 million in damages to the heirs of Aldi Supermarket heir Berthold Albrecht, the DPA reports. The ruling culminates a civil court case brought against Achenbach following allegations that he defrauded Albrecht of up to €23 million (see Fraud Claim Against Art Adviser). The art adviser is also part of a criminal trial, taking place in Essen. He has confessed to portions of the allegations (see Achenbach Gives Surprise Partial-Confession in Fraud Case and Achenbach Confesses to Yet More Fraud).

Meanwhile, German auction house Van Ham has won the rights to sell artworks still owned by the adviser's bankrupt company, Achenbach Art Consulting.

A plan by internationally-renowned artist Christo to hang miles of fabric over the Arkansas River is moving forward.

United States District Judge William Martinez ruled Friday that the Bureau of Land Management did not violate federal law in its November 2011 approval of the artist's Over The River project.

Opposition group Rags Over the Arkansas River (ROAR) claimed that the BLM's decision violated the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

A long-standing restitution dispute between Germany's Kunstsammlung NRW and the heirs of the Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, regarding the provenance of Juan Gris work, "Die Welt" reports. The museum has called on the panel of experts from the so-called Limbach Commission to adjudicate the ongoing issue. The commission's rulings will be officially non-binding, but can hold significant sway in deciding restitution cases. The museum has asked the help of the panel of experts from the Limbach Commission to adjudicate the case.

The Kunstsammlung NRW claims that after years of provenance research it has not any found evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt that Juan Gris's work "Guitar and Ink Bottle on a Table" (1913) belonged to the Jewish art dealer.

The New York Court of Appeals reversed a decision that could have forced auction houses to reveal the identities of consignors. The original ruling was made by the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court in 2012 and declared that state law required that buyers be allowed to know the names of sellers in post-auction paperwork in order for the sale to be considered official.  

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed against New York auctioneer William J. Jenack. After Jenack sold a Russian antique in 2008, the buyer refused to pay, claiming that the post-sale documentation had not identified the seller. The ruling on Tuesday, December 17, stated that Jenack had provided sufficient information to the buyer for the sale to be considered binding.   

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought against The New Yorker and one of its writers by Peter Paul Biro, a forensic art expert. Biro was the subject of a 16,000-word article about art authentication and the process of matching fingerprints on paintings to the artists who created them. Biro claimed that the article, which was published in The New Yorker in July 2010, left readers with a negative impression of him and his work.

Judge J. Paul Oetken dismissed the case saying that the writer, David Grann, did not act “recklessly” or vilify Biro. The ruling, which was released on Thursday, August 1, 2013, applied to Gawker Media, Business Insider, two additional websites and a biography of Jackson Pollock published by Yale University that mentioned Grann’s New Yorker article.

Biro’s lawyer, Richard Altman, said that they plan to appeal the court’s ruling.