Drink These Links: Unauthorized Use of Pollock Images; Unorthodox Proposal for the Barnes; Opposition to Auction-House Practices

If at first you are explicitly denied authorization to publish images of an artist’s copyrighted work…reproduce them anyway? Such appears to be the shaky stance of Boston College in its catalogue for the just opened Pollock Matters show, which includes images of genuine Pollocks in along with the much-doubted works recently discovered by Alex Matter. Boston Globe reporter Geoff Edgers, on his Exhibitionist blog, has the story.
Philadelphia Inquirer art critic Edward Sozanski has this suggestion for rethinking the bizarre scheme to reproduce the Merion-based Barnes galleries and installations in the planned mega-Barnes in Philly: Drop Barnes’ quirky ensembles in favor of a more traditional masterpiece installation, with subsidiary galleries devoted to particular artists. In other words, as long as you’re intent on violating the donor’s intent, you may as well go all the way. Does it count for nothing that Barnes officials, in hearings before the judge who approved the move to Philly, had explicitly promised to reproduce the installation designed by founder Albert Barnes? Sozanski would prefer that everything stay in Merion, which is clearly the right answer.
Is there a revolt (including possible legal action) brewing over Christie’s and Sotheby’s recent copycat increases in fees charged to buyers? Colin Gleadell of the London Telegraph has the story. Meanwhile, Jessica Best and Betty Flood of the Maine Antique Digest report that a bill introduced in the NY State Legislature would prohibit “chandelier bidding” up to the level of the reserve, “unless the bids are identified with the phrase ‘for the consignor.'”