NOCAL| Art Law 2019

Image: Protesters in May demanding that Warren B. Kanders be removed from the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He resigned on Thursday. Credit: Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

From Kanders to Contracts: Four Experts Discuss the Legal, Policy and Ethical Issues Confronting Museums, Dealers, Donors and Collectors.

Every day brings news of a lawsuit, court ruling or dispute relating to art. Did a prominent dealer sell a fake to an esteemed collector? Should a museum reject a gift from tainted hands? Should an important painting be deaccessioned so a museum can expand the breadth of its collection?  What is the intellectual property in visual art and how may it be used? Who has the final word on a work’s authenticity?

Event Schedule: 

6-6:30 PM: Exclusive Hosted Cocktail Reception for ArtTable Members for ArtTable’s Executive Director, Jessica Porter
6:30-8:30 PM: Panel Discussion

Exclusive Opportunity for ArtTable Members:

Please join ArtTable’s Northern CA’s Executive Committee for a private meeting with ArtTable Executive Director Jessica Porter at 6:00 p.m., prior to the Panel Discussion in the YBCA Lounge. Thank you to WithersWorldwide for hosting.

The program is organized by the Northern California Chapter of ArtTable and is sponsored by Withers Worldwide, a global law firm specializing in complex legal needs.

Thank you to ArtTable Executive Committee Members Kimberly Almazan, Dorothy Davila, Tracy Freedman and Donna Napper, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and sponsor WithersWorldwide.

Meet Our Panelists: 

Lauren Curry serves as General Counsel to San Francisco’s municipal arts and cultural organizations, including: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (de Young Museum and Legion of Honor), Asian Art Museum, Arts Commission, Film Commission and Grants for the Arts.  Curry has over a decade of experience advising art professionals including teaching Art & the Law at the San Francisco Art Institute.  Most recently Curry was invited to present on a panel at the annual Legal Issues in Museums Administration conference on the topic, #FreeSpeech: Museums and the First Amendment.  Curry completed her undergraduate work at UCLA, and received her JD from U.C. Hastings College of the Law.

Jenny Dixon is Director Emeritus at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum effective January 1, 2018 after fourteen and a half years as its Director.  While at the Noguchi she uniquely changed the IRS status of what had been a private artist foundation, of which the Museum was a program, into a public benefit institution. Prior her to her tenure at Noguchi, she had served as the Director of The Bronx Museum.  Dixon has taught courses in public art and arts administration and served as an Associate Professor at Parsons School of Design, the Cooper Union and NYU’s Langone School of the Arts.  Dixon has served on numerous boards, received both a BA and BFA in arts education and sculpture from the University of Colorado at Boulder.  She is currently serving her second term as a Board Member of ArtTable.

Simon Frankel has been lead counsel in a wide range of complex civil disputes and copyright and trademark cases, with an emphasis on the technology and consumer products sectors. Frankel has also led defense of numerous consumer class actions, including unfair competition and false advertising claims under California Business and Professions Code Section 17200. He has served as lead counsel to numerous Internet service providers in putative class actions asserting privacy claims that were dismissed at the pleading stage.  He is also a recognized authority in the field of art law, where he has handled disputes involving cultural property claims, title issues, moral rights claims, and resale royalties and also advised on a range of fine art transactions. He teaches a class on Art and the Law at Stanford Law School and is chair of Covington’s Copyright and Trademark practice group.

Kimberly Almazan is Counsel at Withers Worldwide and a member of its Art Law team.  Almazan’s art law practice includes the representation of artists, dealers, appraisers and auction houses in litigation and contractual negotiations. She has extensive experience with authenticity issues, as well as transactions in which works of art are pledged as collateral for loans. She was lead counsel in a group of lawsuits to recover collateral for a client that had a perfected security interest in a California gallery’s works of art; she successfully recovered damages for valuable works of art by, among others, Marc Chagall, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jeff Koons, that had been fraudulently conveyed after the gallery owner defaulted. Almazan is the Membership Chair and an Executive Committee member of ArtTable’s Northern California chapter.