IFAR Journal

The edited and illustrated proceedings of a May 2023 IFAR Evening where four specialists – connoisseurs all – from different areas of the art world addressed the question of the ongoing role of traditional connoisseurship in an era when scientific and mathematical tools play an increasing role. The speakers were:

- JOHN ELDERFIELD, independent curator and Curator Emeritus, Painting and Sculpture, MoMA;
- KATE GANZ, art historian, collector, dealer and catalogue raisonné author;
- CARMEN MELIÁN, Principal, Melián Arts and former Director and Senior Specialist, Latin American Art Dept., Sotheby’s;
- DAVID FREEDBERG, Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art, Columbia University and Director of the Italian Academy. The publication includes the post-speaker panel discussion and Q&A. Dr. Sharon Flescher, IFAR’s Executive Director, moderated.

The edited and illustrated proceedings of a 2019 IFAR Evening devoted to the state of the beloved cathedral 5 months after the April 2019 fire. Talks by three of the four distinguished speakers are included in the Journal:

- NANCY WU, Ph.D., Educator Emerita, Metropolitan Museum of Art and previously, Senior Managing Educator, Public Programs, The Cloisters;
- MICHAEL T. DAVIS, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Art History and former Chair of the Medieval Studies and Architectural Studies Programs, Mount Holyoke College;
- LINDSAY S. COOK, Ph.D., Assistant Teaching Professor of Architectural History, Penn State University and Chair, the Digital Resources Committee of the International Center of Medieval Art.

The fourth speaker, GEORGE WHEELER, Ph.D., Senior Research Scholar, Dept. of Scientific Research, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Senior Scientist, Highbridge Materials Consulting; and Adjunct Professor, Univ. of Pennsylvania and Columbia University, participated in the panel discussion published in the Journal, moderated by Nancy Wu. An Update by Sharon Flescher, Ph.D., IFAR’s Executive Director, is also included.

IFAR’s Director of Art Research discusses IFAR’s authentication research concerning a limestone sculpture, Baptist Lady, which IFAR accepted as a work by African American sculptor William Edmondson. IFAR’s opinion relied heavily on connoisseurship.

The authors report on the outcome of Kerson v. Vt. Law School, Inc. in which the artist Samuel Kerson sued the Vermont Law School (VLS) under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) for concealing two murals depicting American slavery and the Abolitionist movement that he’d painted 30 years previously. The District Court and Second Circuit sided with VLS in it argument that the works did not constitute modification or destruction under VARA, and Kerson decided not to petition the Supreme Court.

A discussion of the case Morford v. Cattelan in which the artist Joe Morford sued conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan for copyright infringement of the former’s 2000 wall sculpture Banana & Orange. Cattelan countered that his 2019 work, Comedian, was inspired from his own 2018 sculpture. The District Court for the Southern District of Florida analyzed Morford’s claims based on two elements of a copyright infringement claim: ownership of a valid copyright and copying of original elements of the work.

Summarizes the outcome of a restitution claim against the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation any by the heirs of a consortium of German-Jewish art dealers who said that medieval relics known as the “Guelph Treasure” were sold by their relatives under duress in the 1930s at below market value. The case, covered extensively in previous issues of the IFAR Journal, raised many legal issues including the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

 

In a coda to Konstantin Akinsha’s article, “The Scourge of Avant-Garde Fakes,” in the previous issue of the IFAR Journal (Vol. 21, nos. 3&4), an exhibition at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College highlights fake artworks of the Russian Modernists.

 

The Republic of Turkey’s claim against Christie’s and Michael Steinhardt for the sculpture known as the Guennol Stargazer ended in March 2023 when the Second Circuit affirmed the District Court’s ruling against Turkey and Turkey did not petition for hearing by the Supreme Court. The case was covered in depth n previous issues of the IFAR Journal and involved issues such as the validity of the 1906 Ottoman era cultural property law on which Turkey based its claim; the statute of limitations; and which side bore the burden of proof.

Announcement of new IFAR board leadership. In September 2023, Jennifer Schipf was elected Chair of IFAR. She succeeded Anthony Williams. Board members Kate Ganz and Steven P. Schwartz were elected Vice Chairs.

The author, a Former First Assistant Attorney General of Massachusetts, proposes the creation of a new international organization to deal with provenance research.

Stolen items include Robert van den Hoecke’s Soldiers in Their Encampment, stolen from a museum in Zurich in the fall of 2022; Fernand Leger’s The 14^th of July, stolen in Paris in March 2022; three of nine pieces of Chinese porcelain stolen from a museum in Cologne, Germany in August 2022.

Missing items include Philipp Peter Roos’ Pastoral Scene, missing from a church in Upper Austria in December 2018; Eastman Johnson’s Andreas Achenbach, missing in Massachusetts in May 2023; Dorothee Ratsch’s Nude Boy missing in Berlin in February 2021.

Recovered items include Rubert Gemmel Hutchison’s Children Wading, stolen from a museum in in Glasgow, Scotland in 1988; David Teniers II’s Monkeys in a Kitchen, stolen in transit in Belgium in 1997; and Vincent Van Gogh’s The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring, stolen from a museum in Laren, The Netherlands in 2022.