Law

How we should regulate AI is the trillion-dollar question

With cases of breaches to artists' copyright escalating, an international framework is vital

Web3news

US Air Force officer arrested for alleged NFT fraud

An active-duty senior airman was detained for his role in a scheme overhyping the value of NFTs

New York City Council bill calls for an accounting of all monuments to beneficiaries of slavery

The bill, currently under review by Mayor Eric Adams's administration, renews conversations about the role of public statues that lionise America's history of slavery

Lawnews

US drag show laws are a threat to artistic freedom and an attack on LGBTQ communities, say critics

A wave of local and state legislation “protecting” minors from drag shows has been denounced as a morally subjective, an anti-queer dog whistle, and likely to lead to the censorship of performance art

Lawnews

Poet and translator to sue British Museum for copyright and moral rights infringement

Vancouver-based Yilin Wang has raised more than £15,000 via Crowd Justice to begin legal proceedings

New York's Spring art bonanza: the shows, the sales, the fairs

Plus, the Richard Prince copyright case and Sarah Sze in London

Hosted by Ben Luke and Aimee Dawson. With guest speakers Anny Shaw and Laura Gilbert. Produced by David. Clack and Julia Michalska
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June trial date set for Russian artist who leaked sex video of President Emmanuel Macron’s ‘right-hand man’

Pyotr Pavlensky created his Pornopolitics work in response to the video and now faces up to two years in prison for publishing sexual content without the participants' consent

NFTnews

New York court dismisses case over ownership of ‘world’s first NFT’ sold for $1.5m at Sotheby’s

Lawsuit is one of the first in the US to examine how blockchain technology affects the ownership of digital art

'Like being on display in a zoo': judges rule in favour of luxury flat owners living next to Tate Modern in battle over privacy

Landmark Supreme Court ruling finds Tate Modern's viewing platform as private nuisance to luxury flat owners it overlooks

Was Van Gogh's olive grove landscape another Nazi-era 'forced sale'?

We uncover the tangled tale of the painting controversially sold off by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1972 and now in an Athens museum

Lawnews

Police raid on East London multi-arts complex Antepavilion declared unlawful by High Court

Four people were arrested and released without charge in June 2021, but no information has been publicly provided about why the raid was carried out

Peter Doig awarded $2.5m in sanctions following legal saga over prison painting

The lawsuit centred on the authorship of a desert landscape painting signed “Pete Doige” and created by an inmate at a Canadian prison

Van Gogh's Tokyo Sunflowers: Was it a Nazi forced sale? And is the painting now worth $250m?

Bought for a Japanese museum in 1987, the masterpiece has just been claimed by the heirs of a Jewish Berlin banker

Crime news

Moscow-based architect, who built ‘Putin’s Palace’, refuses to return to Italy to face trial

Italian Lanfranco Cirillo—whose 150-strong art collection was seized last year—will be tried in absentia by an Italian court next month for tax and money laundering crimes

Digital Ageanalysis

New online safety laws aim to protect children—but will they harm artists?

As the UK’s troubled Online Safety Bill finally looks set to become law, there are still concerns about whether it will get the balance between online safety and censorship right

US laws meant to stop sex trafficking are making it difficult for artists to promote and sell their art online

A set of ambiguous laws has pushed platforms to refuse service to artists whose work includes nude imagery or could be construed as sexual

NFTnews

Hilma af Klint’s family criticises the NFT sale of the artist’s sacred paintings

The Swedish artist's family say the digital drop contradicts the artist’s will and goes against her artistic intentions

The five year warranty on the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo is about to run out—could the buyer have asked for their money back?

Warranties of authenticity offered to buyers can be hard to enforce when auctioneers can fall back on the “generally accepted opinion of scholars and experts”

UK heritage minister says government has no plans to amend law that prevents museums from 'disposing' of objects

The 1983 National Heritage Act was debated in the House of Lords—but the issue of reform will be further discussed ahead of its 40-year anniversary in May 2023

Art Decodedanalysis

NFTs use 'smart' contracts—but what exactly are they?

The sale of works on the blockchain inscribes "promises" within the code—but it is not that simple

Lawcomment

The UK has updated its Anti-Money Laundering Guidance—here's what it means for the art market

Clarifications simplify who falls into the "regulated art sector" and who should be doing "Know Your Customer" or "KYC" checks on whom

Billionaire battle rages on as Geneva court overturns dismissal of Dmitry Rybolovev's fraud case against art dealer Yves Bouvier

Rybolovlev is accusing Bouvier of having swindled €1.1bn from him through the €2bn sales of 38 works of art from 2003 to 2014

New York City removes rules governing auction houses in bid to stimulate business

But firms say they will continue to operate policies and practices that promote transparency

St Petersburg artist faces prison after anti-war protest in grocery store

Sasha Skochilenko replaced price tags with news reports about bombings in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol

Qatari sheikh loses appeal over fake antiquities claim against Phoenix Ancient Art

Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdullah al-Thani had accused the New York- and Geneva-based dealership of selling him two allegedly fake statues for a combined $5.2m

Rothko lawsuit lays bare the privacy versus provenance conflict

A recent case, relating to the sale of work by the Abstract Expressionist, centred on the tension between client confidentiality and transparency; the solution is far from simple

Labournews

Can New York's imminent salary transparency law pierce the art world's smokescreen?

City council's move to enforce wage disclosures in job adverts could usher in a sea change at major US cultural institutions—challenging persistent pay inequality in the sector

Jeff Koons loses court case against Italian collector over 'fake' work

The American artist claimed the sculpture of two snakes was a fake—now a court in Italy has overruled him and said the collector can seek compensation