How many Rockwell pieces are stolen? I’m not sure it’s an issue as much as it is for Picasso’s or Van Gogh’s. I love Rockwell, but it’s not like you hear about a theft every few years on the evening news.
That is exactly what I meant, sorry for the lack of clarity.
No clue as to American law in this regard, but then the OP did not only invite lawyers in here. IANAL.
How could he not know? How could his board not know? Because provenance, even today, is not always crystal clear. I suspect that his Board is not filled with morons and that they trusted the dealer from whom they purchased the work of art.
I said he would give the cash value back because it is the least he can do- AND- he is on the Board of the Rockwell Museum. It puts him in a funky place. He loves the piece, he has it in his personal collection. $ 700K is a lot of bread even if you are Spielberg and more to the point, being wealthy does not mean you should have to go writing checks for things that are not your legal responsibility. I suspect he has attorneys who are well versed in this kind of law, in California, and will advise him as to the disposition of both the art work, and the VALUE of the art work.
I’m not a big fan of double jeopardy. I would say that it would suck if his company had to both surrender the work AND pay back the $ 700k insurance pay-out. He did nothing wrong, as near as anyone can see.
Go back a few steps in the journey and find the people who bought a stolen work of art with greed and malice ahead of honesty and provenance in their hearts. They are the ones to hold in contempt. It’s just easier for a lot of people to hate Spielberg because he is high-profile and wealthy.
Doesn’t make him the guilty party, though, does it?
Timing is everything. Two Picasso works were stolen last week.
It made the evening news. I doubt it will be a few years before we hear of another major theft.
My point is, he’s on the Board. How could THAT group of people not be discussing stolen Rockwells?
Why would] they? The Norman Rockwell Museum houses and exhibits a collection of Rockwells, but this piece wasn’t stolen from THEM, and it was stolen 30 years ago. Why would it come up in their own board meetings?
Plus, it wouldn’t surprise me if Spielberg’s membership on the board wasn’t mostly symbolic anyway. He probably donates money, but that doesn’t mean he goes to many meetings or is particulary active. It certainly doesn’t mean he should have an encyclopedic knowledge of what Rockwell pieces might be missing or stolen. What does that have to do with the museum he’s associated with?
You can’t seriously think that the board of a museum that wasn’t even the place from which it was stolen would have ‘talk about the 30-year-old art theft’ on its regular meeting agendas?
Why wouldn’t they? They discuss other pieces that aren’t in their collection. You really think the concept of discussing stolen Rockwells would be preposterous at a Rockwell Museum board meeting? You don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that it would come up once in a while, seeing as they’re dedicated to the art of Norman Rockwell? You don’t think the board members would discuss their own collections once in a while? Yeah…that’s a real stretch.
For thirty years? Um, yeah I do.
because it’s irrelevant to the operation of their museum.
Cite?
Is it absurd to think that a discussion of THIS stolen painting might simply never have occasion to come up at a board meeting?
You seem to be contending that it would HAVE to come up in a board meeting. No one is saying it’s impossible that the subject could have arisen, but you seem to be contending that it would have been unavoidable when it would have been unlikely at best. It was not a piece that had anything to do with their collection and it was stolen 30 years ago. Why would the subject ever surface in discussions of the day-to-day operations of their own museum?
From the Museum’s site:
I wanted a cite that other paintings are discussed at board meetings, not on their website.
The linked item represents a current (relative to the posting) event anyway. It doesn’t exactly provide support for the proposition that board meetings would necessarily have to routinely discuss a 30 year old theft, or that Steven Spielberg, as a member of the board of this museum would have to be aware of it.
Consider van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet - it’s a very well-known painting. But nobody knows where it is or who owns it. The last time it was publicly seen was 1990. The person who bought it at that time has since died. There are rumors that it’s been privately sold once or twice since 1990. And all this is leaving aside the fact that it was confiscated from a German museum by the German government during the Nazi era.
Fifty years from now, do you think anybody’s going to be able to prove who the legal owner is?
Spielberg sitting on the board of trustees of the Norman Rockwell museum doesn’t mean that much, although he did help found the thing.
I’m sure he potentially sits on lots of boards where he isn’t particularly active. But Cartooniverse pointed out in post #2 he’s also a serious collector of Rockwells. That doesn’t mean he’d know whether it were stolen or not.
It does still make this scandalous though. Not in a “someone’s going to jail” sort of way but a scandal nonetheless. He bought the painting for about $70 around 1989 and I’d assume whoever he had buy if for him should have been expert at that sort of thing. It must have been fairly public knowledge Spielberg owned this painting, it’s been insured and I imagine periodically reappraised over the years by people who again, ought to be expert at that sort of thing. How can you appraise the value of a Rockwell at $700K and not know something of the painting’s history?
From this article:
So it appears someone who knew the painting was stolen saw it for sale around the time Spielberg acquired it, she notified the owners of the painting but nothing came of it.
Scandalous, I say.
When buying a painting worth that much, doesn’t one also purchase a kind of “title insurance” at the same time to insure that the seller is the true owner of the property?
People do this when they buy real estate. Why wouldn’t they do it when buying expensive art?
I’m curious now. Who is the legal owner of the painting at this point? It was owned by the Clayton Art Gallery in 1989. They sold it to a man in Missouri but it was stolen before he took possession of it. The gallery refunded his money. And the gallery has since gone out of business.
I’m guessing the guy in Missouri doesn’t own it - his money was refunded which presumedly cancelled the sale. That would imply that the gallery maintained legal ownership after the theft - but it no longer exists. Is there some other individual or business who bought the “miscellaneous other assets” of the Clayton Art Gallery when it closed and has suddenly acquired a $700,000 windfall?
Okay, I did a little online detective work. The Clayton Art Gallery was owned by the Circle Fine Art Corporation. The company was sold by its founders, Jack and Carolyn Solomon, in 1993. In 1995, the company defaulted on loan payments to the Standard Chartered Bank (it also defaulted on payments to the Chrysler Capital Corporation later that same year) and declared bankruptcy in 1996.
So depended on the terms of the 1993 sale, I would assume the painting either belongs to the Solomons or to the Standard Chartered Bank and the Chrysler Capital Corporation.
And I see I made a mistake above. The painting was stolen in 1973 not 1989.
Maybe I’m not clear on what the function of a board is. I would think that they’d be discussing that sort of thing; current items that would be interesting additions to the website.
I didn’t mean to imply that he’d have to be aware of it. I’m just surprised that it could have escaped everyone’s attention for that long. You’d think it would come up in conversation sometime over the years. I’m not saying he’s complicit in anything. I’m saying that I find it odd that he’s not aware, considering he’s involved with people who discuss Rockwell paintings *in general * and regularly. For instance, I would think the chances of him having some of these people to his home wouldn’t be out of the question, either. If he had it displayed there, you’d think it would trip someone’s memory.
The following is the analysis a non-professional, not-even-licensed-to-practice-anywhere law student only.
Even though Spielberg may be a bona find purchaser (BFP), meaning that he bought the painting from somebody he subjectively believed had the ability to transfer title to him and this assumption was objectively reasonable, he does NOT have better title than the original owner of the painting. A purchaser of goods can only acquire the same title as was held by the seller. Here, the seller had a VOID title, because the painting had been stolen. Spielberg therefore didn’t purchase good title, and he’s going to lose out to (at least) the original owner even if he’s a BFP.
There are a few ways that a BFP can get title even superior to that of the original owner, but they aren’t applicable here. That’s probably what DxZero was thinking of when he said Spielberg wouldn’t have to give the painting back. He’s right, though, that if Spielberg is a BFP (which he almost certainly is), he won’t be subject to any civil or criminal liability.
Another way Spielberg might have title to the painting is through adverse possession. To claim title through adverse possession, you must act like the owner/assert control over the property in question in such a way as to provide fair notice to the true owner that you’re staking a claim against his or her property. If the statute of limitations (the amount of time the true owner is allowed to bring suit) runs, congratulations, you get to keep the property! It’s pretty hard to use a painting in such a way that it should give notice to the true owner that you have it, unless you’re displaying it in a museum or something. As a concession to this, the law in most states says that the statute of limitations doesn’t start running against the true owner as long as he is “reasonably diligent” in seeking his property.
Now, I have no idea what the statute of limitations for this type of action is in California (or whatever the forum state). I also don’t know whether the true owner was “reasonably diligent” in seeking the painting, thus preventing the statute from starting to run. It does seem that the bar for “reasonable diligence” might be pretty low, though. See, e.g., O’Keeffe v. Snyder. Since the painting was presumably reported stolen at the time of the theft, I’m guessing the statute of limitations never started to run, and therfore Spielberg couldn’t claim adverse possession.
All of this is a long way of saying that even if Spielberg wanted to keep the painting, he probably doesn’t have the right to do so. If he wants to get his money back, he probably has a cause of action against the gallery or its successors.
Is there any analogy to handling a countefeit $ 20 ?
I get it from a store. Unknowingly. The store clerk had no clue. The customer who handed it to THAT clerk may or may not have knowingly passed a fraud bill.
I go to the bank to make a cash deposit. The bank seizes my 20, smiles and says, " Sorry pal. You're out the 20.00 ".
The bank can claim “ownership” based upon their representation of the Federal Reserve in such matters. I doubt I can get my $ 20 back from that store clerk, and the bank isn’t giving me squat.
Perhaps you are right- Spielberg has no rights to the painting at all, despite his having paid for it. OTOH, he IS a fan of the artist, and we presume him to be a decent guy. I cannot see him fighting this in court for years. I can see him giving it to the Museum and taking the loss.