{"id":1911,"date":"2018-02-12T11:14:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T16:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/?p=1911"},"modified":"2023-07-25T11:45:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T15:45:00","slug":"art-bastard-sues-new-york-art-museums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/2018\/02\/art-bastard-sues-new-york-art-museums\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Art Bastard&#8221; Sues New York Art Museums"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last Tuesday, Robert Cendella, a painter known as &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/artbastard.com\/\">Art Bastard<\/a>,&#8221; has\u00a0brought a class action lawsuit\u00a0against contemporary art museums in New York.\u00a0He alleges in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/371342606\/Cenedella-v-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art-et-al\">complaint<\/a>\u00a0that these museums have illegally conspired with five major galleries in New York to raise the prices of the works by artists represented by those galleries.\u00a0Cendella claims that a handful of galleries, private collectors, and auction houses play an influential role in determining what pieces museums exhibit. Museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) and Museum of Modern Art\u00a0are dependent\u00a0on private collectors and gallery owners for their exhibits, either through loans and donations, or lower purchase prices.\u00a0Cendella alleges\u00a0that private collectors donate 80\u201390% of the art displayed in museums in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>When an artist exhibits at a high-profile museum, they raise their personal profile, which allows them to charge higher prices for their work.\u00a0In the complaint, Cendella attributes\u00a0Mark Grotjahn\u2019s drastic increase in prices, from around $300,000 to $1.2 million per painting, to the exposure he received from exhibiting at defendant\u00a0Museum of Modern Art. These artists are usually represented by one of\u00a0five major galleries\u00a0in New York, and\u00a0Cendella argues\u00a0that these galleries, working in tandem with museums, intentionally exclude artists that they do not represent in order to artificially inflate the prices for their own artists.\u00a0The complaint\u00a0points to an\u00a0<u><a href=\"http:\/\/observer.com\/2015\/04\/big-surprise-art-world-power-is-all-about-who-you-know\/\">investigation\u00a0<\/a><\/u>done by\u00a0<em><u><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theartnewspaper.com\/\">The Art Newspaper\u00a0<\/a><\/u><\/em>that &#8220;almost one-third of solo museum exhibitions in the US are represented by one of five commercial galleries.&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/371342606\/Cenedella-v-Metropolitan-Museum-of-Art-et-al\">Between 2007 and 2013<\/a>,\u00a090% of the major solo exhibitions in the Guggenheim, a defendant in this case, featured artists represented by the five galleries.\u00a0Cendella argues\u00a0that &#8220;the closed system&#8221; of galleries, museums and auction houses has created an &#8220;anticompetitive ecosystem&#8221; that shuts out artists not represented by the major galleries.<\/p>\n<p>Cendella argues\u00a0that this behavior violates the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/wex\/sherman_antitrust_act\">Sherman Antitrust\u00a0<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/wex\/sherman_antitrust_act\">Act<\/a>, and that the museums and their co-conspirators have engaged in an \u00a0&#8220;unreasonable restraint of trade&#8221; through the suppression\u00a0of price competition in the contemporary art market. Because of this,\u00a0Cendella and the rest of the class, consisting of contemporary artists, were deprived of free and open competition. As such,\u00a0Cendella is seeking\u00a0$100 million in damages. Cendella, however,\u00a0does not provide any direct evidence\u00a0of collusion between the museums and the gallery owners.\u00a0He only pointed to the overrepresentation of the galleries&#8217; artists to back up his claims. It seems that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/art-world\/robert-cenedella-lawsuit-museums-1218449\">Cendella&#8217;s ultimate goal<\/a>\u00a0is not to win the lawsuit, but rather to increase the dialogue on what he believes is a serious issue in the art world.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1912\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1912\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/78\/2018\/02\/Neri_Oxman_MoMa_Exhibit.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1912\" src=\"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/78\/2018\/02\/Neri_Oxman_MoMa_Exhibit-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/78\/2018\/02\/Neri_Oxman_MoMa_Exhibit-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/78\/2018\/02\/Neri_Oxman_MoMa_Exhibit-768x515.jpg 768w, https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/jsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/78\/2018\/02\/Neri_Oxman_MoMa_Exhibit.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1912\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/User:Adeloscope\">Michael Siegel<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Neri_Oxman_MoMa_Exhibit.jpg\">Neri Oxman MoMa Exhibit<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/legalcode\">CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Adele Zhang is the Online Content Chair and an Entertainment Highlight Contributor for the Harvard Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law and a current first year student at Harvard Law School (Class of 2020).<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last Tuesday, Robert Cendella, a painter known as &#8220;Art Bastard,&#8221; has\u00a0brought a class action lawsuit\u00a0against contemporary art museums in New York.\u00a0He alleges in the complaint\u00a0that these museums have illegally conspired with five major galleries in New York to raise the prices of the works by artists represented by those galleries.\u00a0Cendella claims that a handful of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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