The Art Law Podcast

Katie and Steve speak with esteemed copyright lawyer Nancy Wolff about the Ninth Circuit case Sedlik v. Von Drachenberg, in which photographer Jeffrey Sedlik sued celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D for copyright infringement related to her inking a copy of his photographic portrait of Miles Davis on a friend's arm and publicizing the process on social media. They discuss the Ninth Circuit's unique approach to copyright infringement ...

Katie and Steve continue discussing the Barnes Foundation with attorney Ralph Wellington, who represented the Barnes Foundation during its successful but extremely controversial multi-year effort to amend its founding documents and create a new arts education center in Philadelphia. They discuss the origins of the Foundation, its governing documents, financial struggles, and evolution over t...

Steve and Katie speak with critic and author Blake Gopnik about his new book The Maverick's Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream. They discuss Barnes's rise out of poverty to the heights of modern art collecting and his progressive societal priorities, namely the foundation he started to educate common people through a formalist approach to modern art. This foundation, like Barnes himself, became mired in controversy and a ...

Steve and Katie talk with fellow art lawyer Maggie Hoag about her journey from art to law and then to art law, including her transition from private practice to a long career as a top lawyer at Christie's in New York. They discuss the nature of legal work at a major auction house and how the practice and industry has changed over time.

Notes for this episode: https://artlawpodcast.com/2025/11/12/art-law-at-christies-with-maggie-ho...

Steve and Katie speak with art market regulatory and compliance expert Jane Levine about the state of anti-money laundering regulations in the art world and the efficacy and limitations of new legislation proposed in the United States.

Notes for this episode: https://artlawpodcast.com/2025/10/14/the-art-market-integrity-act-are-aml-regulations-finally-coming-to-the-us-art-market/

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Katie and Steve speak with Swiss art lawyer Florian Schmidt-Gabain about Switzerland's (very) recent establishment of an "Independent Committee for Cultural Property with a Burdened Past" that will hear ownership disputes about Nazi-looted art as well cultural property acquired during the colonial era. They discuss why it has taken the Swiss so long to establish a process like this, the uniq...

Steve and Katie talk with Professor Stephen Urice and Judge Simon Frankel about their careers in art law, art law teaching, and their authorship of the 6th edition of the renowned art law textbook "Law, Ethics, and the Visual Arts." They talk about art law as an academic subject, how to teach and present art law to students, and the experience of updating and rewriting an iconic textbook originally written by the founder of art law...

Katie and Steve discuss the recent decision by the New York Supreme Court granting the Manhattan District Attorney request for a turnover order directing the Art Institute of Chicago to return a drawing by Egon Schiele, "Russian War Prisoner," that the museum acquired in 1966. Katie and Steve review the history of the ownership of the drawing by Fritz Grünbaum, a cabaret singer who was killed by the Nazis in 1941, and the legal pro...

Steve and Katie speak with Swiss art lawyer Anne Laure Bandle about the subject of her book "The Sale of Misattributed Artworks and Antiques at Auction" - the problem of "sleepers," or misattributed and undervalued works of art sold at auction. We all dream of buying a painting at a yard sale that we later discover to be worth millions of dollars. On this podcast, we discuss the market incentives and structures that prevent discove...

Steve and Katie welcome back Professor Amy Adler to discuss the First Amendment's free speech protections as they apply to artistic expression in the context of several recent incidents. Specifically, they discuss the police seizure of certain Sally Mann photographs from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in the context of obscenity and child pornography laws, the removal of the For Freedom...

Katie and Steve speak with renowned German art lawyer Dr. Katharina Garbers-von Boehm about the law of title in Germany as it applies to art, including the concepts of good and bad faith in considering ownership, the legal primacy of possession, and the doctrine of adverse possession that allows possessors of stolen property, like Nazi-looted art, to take good title after a certain number of years. They discuss differences under U....

Katie and Steve speak with their colleague Eden Burgess and guest Dr. Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba, Curator of African Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art and an expert in Benin Bronzes, about the artistic history of Benin City in current day Nigeria, the fate of the Benin Bronzes that dispersed around the world after the British invasion and looting of Benin Kingdom in 1897, and how we should think about ownership and possession of th...

Steve and Katie speak with former SCH colleague Rebecca Fine, now CEO of Athena Art Finance, about her career, how art finance is structured and diligenced, who art finance is for, and the risks that Athena and other lenders try to mitigate.

Notes for this episode: https://artlawpodcast.com/2024/11/18/the-ins-and-outs-of-art-finance/

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Katie and Steve speak with preeminent art advisor Megan Fox Kelly about the proliferation of resale restrictions in art transactions, what problems they seek to address, who they purport to help, how effective they are, and the legal issues they raise. They discuss the overlapping cultural, social, and legal aspects of these contractual terms.

Notes for this episode: https://artlawpodcast.com/2024/10/08/enforceability-and-effectiv...

Steve and Katie speak with two preeminent French art lawyers, Anne-Sophie Nardon and Olivier de Baecque, about disputes surrounding the authenticity of art and how French and US courts get involved in these disputes. Because many of the world's greatest artists made their home in France, many of the experts on these artists and their work are in France, and French courts have long adjudicated disputes about the accuracy of opinions...

Steve and Katie discuss several art law topics in this end-of-season episode. They talk about internal thefts at the British Museum, the ongoing Victorious Youth litigation between Italy and the Getty Trust, the Damien Hirst backdating scandals, the litigation between the Manhattan DA and the Art Institute of Chicago, and the recent litigation between the Donald Judd Foundation and Kim Kardashian.

End-of-season message from Steve a...

Steve and Katie speak with Italian lawyer Giuseppe Calabi and art historian Sharon Hecker about Italy's cultural patrimony laws granting state institutions control over the use of images of cultural property long in the public domain. They discuss the legal, ethical, and practical issues with such laws and their specific application to uses of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci located at the Gallerie dell'Accade...

Steve and Katie talk with their colleague, Tom Kline, about the Nazi's program of remaking European culture, the enormous theft and displacement of art that occurred as part of that program, and the efforts of the heirs of Jews displaced during World War II to reclaim art and cultural property. The discussion focuses on the Washington Principles, the updated best practices issued upon their 25th anniversary, and how claims for rest...

Katie and Steve speak with colleague Eden Burgess about the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), its history, purpose, and requirements to repatriate cultural property and human remains to Native American tribes and Native Hawaiian Organizations, as well as new regulations that are leading major museums to remove or close exhibitions of Native American and Hawaiian objects while taking action to implemen...