David W. Bowker is the author of the client alert about the Ninth Circuit applying the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 to revive a Nazi-era art appropriation case in Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation, 2017 U.S. App. LEXIS 12265 (9th Cir. Cal. July 10, 2017). The article discusses the district court’s dismissal in 2015 and the Ninth Circuit’s decision to revive the case, with implications for Nazi-era art litigation.
Sotheby’s reported a 2 percent drop in aggregate auction sales for the first six months of 2017, to $2.41 billion, while private sales rose 34 percent to $333.8 million. Consolidated sales total was $2.83 billion, up 4 percent year over year. Sotheby’s noted strong growth in contemporary art, including a 37 percent rise in contemporary sales to $701.4 million and a higher rate of $3 million-plus lots, with Basquiat’s Untitled achieving a notable hammer price in May.
The stolen de Kooning Woman-Ochre painting, looted 31 years ago from the University of Arizona Museum of Art, has been recovered. Preliminary authentication confirms the artwork as Woman-Ochre by Willem de Kooning, with UA officials saying the FBI is investigating. The painting was found in an antiques shop in Silver City, New Mexico, and was traced after the store owner reported it following an estate-sale inquiry.
Willem de Kooning’s Woman-Ochre, stolen in 1985, has been returned to the University of Arizona Museum of Art by a Good Samaritan from New Mexico. Preliminary authentication confirms the work as de Kooning’s, and museum staff retrieved it from Silver City and brought it to Tucson.
The painting Woman-Ochre by Willem de Kooning, stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art, was returned after nearly 32 years. David Van Auker purchased furnishings from a home where the painting was hidden and notified the museum and the FBI; Meg Hagyard commented on the significance of the recovery.
The headline reports that a Willem de Kooning painting, Woman-Ochre, stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art, was recovered after being found in an antiques store in Silver City, New Mexico. The article mentions David Van Auker, Buck Burns, and Rick Johnson of Manzanita Ridge Furniture & Antiques who purchased the painting at an estate sale and later returned it; the painting was valued at about $100 million. The story notes corrections about the antiques shop owner's name and states the painting was looted in 1985 and recovered recently.
Dmitry Rybolovlev and Yves Bouvier are in a high-profile legal battle over art purchases and Sotheby’s involvement. The appellate ruling requires documents related to US art purchases to be released for use in a Monaco case, with emphasis on the Salvator Mundi sale.
After Christie’s May sales of Post-War and Contemporary works from Emily and Jerry Spiegel, the house announced a dedicated October photography auction from their 100-plus-work collection, with published estimates up to $700,000.
The Edward F. Albee Foundation prepared more than 100 works from the playwright’s collection for a dedicated Sotheby’s New York auction, spanning Impressionist and avant-garde art, African sculpture, American post-war painting and prints.