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Just a few days after the Second Circuit held that New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art could keep in its collection the monumental work by Pablo Picasso entitled The Actor, New York’s Appellate Division, First Department, upheld the return to the heirs of the original owners of art allegedly looted by the Nazis during World War II. Both of these recent decisions touch upon the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act (HEAR Act), the 2016 legislation that expanded the timeliness for actions to recover artworks lost during the Holocaust.

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On June 26, 2019, the Second Circuit upheld the 2018 decision of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York that allowed New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Museum) to keep in its collection the monumental work by Pablo Picasso entitled The Actor, 1904−1905. The work was originally owned by Paul Friedrich Leffmann, a successful German-Jewish entrepreneur, who owned a manufacturing business and multiple properties as well as a sizable art collection. In the 1930s, after the newly adopted Nuremberg Laws deprived all German Jews of the rights and privileges of German citizenship, Leffmann was forced to sell his home and business and flee from Germany to Italy.
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UNITED STATES

SCOTUS May Get a Say in the Fate of the Guelph Treasure
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz or SPK), which operates Berlin’s state museums, plans to seek review by the United States Supreme Court of the issue of U.S. courts’ jurisdiction to hear the case of the 1935 sale of the famed Guelph Treasure by Jewish art dealers to the Prussian government. The Guelph Treasure is a collection of 82 pieces of medieval ecclesiastical art originally housed at Brunswick Cathedral in Braunschweig, Germany. The Treasure is presently dispersed between private and museum collections, including the Bode Museum in Berlin. In 2015, the heirs of the Jewish dealers filed a lawsuit against the German government in the United States, alleging that the 1935 sale occurred under duress. SPK unsuccessfully moved to dismiss on jurisdictional grounds and their appeal was rejected his month when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed the petition to rehear en banc.

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UNITED STATES

MFA Boston Bans Two Visitors, Reviews Internal Procedures Following Allegations of Racist Comments Directed at Students on a School Trip
The Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston completed its internal investigation into the complaint that children on a recent school trip to MFA were allegedly subjected to racist comments by visitors and profiling by staff. After reviewing video footage, MFA banned two visitors and revoked their memberships. MFA also committed to changing its protocols and procedures to clarify expectations for visitor and staff behavior.

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UNITED STATES

Computer Viruses as Contemporary Art
Chinese internet artist Guo O Dong created the artwork titled “The Persistence of Chaos” by infecting a 2008 Samsung notebook with six of the worst computer viruses in the world. Now, the artwork is to be sold at auction and potential buyers have already made several hundred bids on the laptop, increasing the current going price to $1.2 million. Luckily the computer, presently “quarantined” in solitary confinement in New York, is firewalled from other computers and cannot spread its malware.

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UNITED STATES

Claude Monet’s Haystacks Painting Sets a New World Record for the First Impressionist Work to Sell for More than $100 Million at Auction
The Meules (Haystacks) painting (1890), part of the Haystacks series by the celebrated French Impressionist Claude Monet, is one of the most recognized images in art history. Last week, the work sold at an auction in New York, breaking records for the most expensive work by the artist ever sold and for the most expensive Impressionist painting.

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UNITED STATES

Chicago Institutes a Registry to Protect Street Art
Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events launched a program to protect street artworks and created a public database of such works. Artists are encouraged to submit their works for inclusion in the database, provided the art was either commissioned or sanctioned by the property owner.

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BREAKING

Notre Dame De Paris in Flames
The world watched in horror on April 15 as Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, built in the 13th century, suffered a devastating fire. The cathedral, one of the world’s greatest historical and architectural treasures, has been plagued by the need for repairs not just in recent years but at least since the time of Victor Hugo. Prominent collectors and institutions have pledged funds for the reconstruction of the cathedral. Wilson Elser partner, Eric Cheng traveled to Paris last week and shared his photo of the cathedral before the fire.

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In March 2019 the U.S. Supreme Court issued decisions in two copyright cases, both of which concern narrow issues of statutory interpretation and are examples of matters that the Court addresses to ensure uniformity in the decisions of the lower courts. Following is an account and analysis of the cases.

Rimini Street
In the first…