Displaying items by tag: Lawsuit

Rodin donated most of the work he held to France in 1916, but a number of plasters were not included. Many years later, some of these were acquired by Gary Snell, a US businessman. Working with another firm, Gruppo Mondiale, Snell arranged the casting of a number of major sculptures in bronze from these plasters.

The long-running dispute between the former board of North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art and the city that housed it is over.

Attorneys for both sides met this week after months of mediation to work out the final settlement, emerging with a plan Wednesday that will split the museum’s assets between the city and departed board members, who have since founded a new institution, and close the lawsuit that was filed earlier this year.

According to a joint statement released Wednesday, North Miami will keep the majority of the 600-work permanent collection, some of which was donated by board members who left MOCA, that was a major sticking point in the mediation talks.

Maurice Sendak was the author of the beloved children's books "Where the Wild Things Are," "In the Night Kitchen," "Chicken Soup with Rice" and many more. The author and illustrator, who could be delightfully gruff (see his not-safe-for-work interview with Stephen Colbert), passed away in 2012 at age 84.

In his will, he directed his rare book collection and items of his personal work be gifted to the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia, and they haven't been, according to a lawsuit filed by the museum last week.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Sendak's relationship with the museum dates to the 1960s, when he began placing his work there on deposit. He was at times a board member and its honorary president. The museum presented dozens of shows of his work.

A bitter dispute over a painting bought for £140 five decades ago reaches the High Court today – with some of the world’s most prominent Caravaggio experts lining up to take sides.

Sotheby’s is being sued over claims that it misattributed a work – The Cardsharps – to a follower of Caravaggio rather than the Italian painter himself, costing the seller millions of pounds.

Andy Warhol’s foundation sued the iconic pop artist’s former bodyguard, accusing him of stealing a 1964 painting of actress Elizabeth Taylor, entitled “Liz,” and hiding it for more than 30 years.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, established by the artist’s will to hold his works, alleged in a civil complaint that former bodyguard Agusto Bugarin is a “patient thief” who stole the work in 1984 and is now trying to sell it “after everyone he thought could challenge his ownership of the work had died.”

It will be a busy day for the first hearing of a lawsuit that has rocked the German art world. On 11 November, the Düsseldorf district court is due to hear the €19m fraud case of the Albrecht family against the art adviser Helge Achenbach, and only 30 minutes later, the case of Achenbach’s wife, who is counter-suing the Albrecht family.

Combatants in a lawsuit over construction problems at the Broad Collection museum now rising in downtown Los Angeles have decided to keep their work gloves on to finish the project before taking them off to fight over who’s to blame for delays and alleged cost overruns.

The Broad contends that problems caused by the subcontractor hired to provide the museum's distinctive concrete and glass exterior drove up costs by at least $19.8 million and set the museum's planned 2014 opening back by at least 15 months.

The New York Times has a thorough rundown of a very messy battle over the estate of the late reclusive photographer Vivian Maier, whose talent only came to light after her death in 2009, aged 83, and “nearly penniless and with no family.” Maier spent most of her life working as a nanny for wealthy Chicago families, quietly pursuing her passion for photography out of the public eye and producing poignant, documentary scenes of everyday life in Chicago, New York, and other American cities.

Since 2007, John Maloof, a former Chicago real estate agent who purchased tens of thousands of negatives for under $400, has been actively promoting and overseeing her work through commercial galleries (most notably with the prestigious Howard Greenberg Gallery), exhibitions, books, and a recent documentary that he helped direct, Finding Vivian Maier.

Major art collector and polarizing figure Bert Kreuk has sued Danish-Vietnamese artist and Hugo Boss Prize winner Danh Vo for €898,000 (approximately $1.2 million), according to a report in the Netherland’s RTL Nieuws. Kreuk claims that Vo failed to deliver an artwork for an exhibition of Kreuk’s collection, titled "Transforming the Known," at the Hague’s Gemeentemuseum (Hague Municipal Museum), which closed in September of last year.

That artwork in question reportedly cost Kreuk $350,000.

A longtime assistant to Jasper Johns pleaded guilty on Wednesday to selling 22 artworks he stole from the artist's Connecticut studio.

The plea deal followed a separate case, earlier this year, in which another former collaborator of Mr. Johns pleaded guilty to selling works unauthorized by the artist. The cases highlight the risks and rewards of forging works by living artists as contemporary art prices soar. (The record price for a work by Mr. Johns, set at Christie's in 2010, is $28.6 million.)