Danziger, Danziger & Muro, LLP

by Carol Vogel

Published in NY Times March 18, 2010

Less than two months before Christie’s will be selling one of Jasper Johns’s signature “Flag” paintings, the hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen privately scooped up a larger and earlier example of that artist’s seminal image. He bought it from Jean-Christophe Castelli, son of Leo Castelli, Mr. Johns’s legendary dealer. The younger Mr. Castelli inherited the painting from his father, who died in 1999.

“I can confirm that Steve Cohen bought the ‘Flag’ painting,” said Sandy Heller, Mr. Cohen’s art adviser. Thomas C. Danziger, Mr. Castelli’s lawyer, also confirmed the sale, adding that the terms of the deal were “strictly confidential.”

While no one will discuss the price, art experts who have heard details of the transaction say Mr. Cohen paid about $110 million.

The painting was executed in 1958 and was so coveted by the dealer that he never sold it. It hung in his Manhattan home until his death. For years before the sale, the younger Mr. Castelli lent the work to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where it was on view.

“It’s beautifully rendered,” said Brett Gorvy, a co-head of Christie’s postwar and contemporary art department and deputy chairman of Christie’s in America. Alongside other masterpieces that Mr. Cohen has purchased over the years — including Willem de Kooning’s “Woman III,” a 1952-53 canvas that he bought in 2006 from the entertainment mogul David Geffen, for roughly $137.5 million, and Andy Warhol’s 1964 “Turquoise Marilyn,” bought from the Chicago collector Stefan Edlis for around $80 million in 2007 — he now has what Mr. Gorvy described as “the most comprehensive collection of American postwar images in private hands.”

While the “Flag” that Christie’s is selling also comes with a pristine provenance — it had been owned by the writer Michael Crichton, who bought it directly from Mr. Johns in 1974 — it is half the size of the one Mr. Cohen bought. “This transaction propels the Crichton painting to a higher level,” Mr. Gorvy said, adding that the only other important “Flag” in private hands is owned by Mr. Geffen. The Cohen sale “only adds to its rarity.”

New U.S. Customs regulations on Chinese antiquities require case-by-case consideration.

Our father used to say that people usually worry about the wrong things in life — so, to be safe, we advise our clients to worry about everything.

This turns out to be especially good advice for collectors of Chinese antiquities, who are now faced with controversial new U.S. Customs and Border Protection regulations ostensibly intended to curtail the looting of Chinese cultural patrimony. Our concern here: In trying to curb the illicit trade in Chinese artifacts — clearly a laudable goal — the U.S. government has inadvertently created a minefield for legitimate collectors, dealers and scholars. Read more…

Beware of botched repair jobs that can’t be undone and wind up devaluing works of art.

In the art world, those who forget the past are destined to repeat it — often for the benefit of a bored court stenographer. This is especially true in the area of art restoration, where mistakes by prior owners can haunt those down the line. Read more…

While pursuing that catch at auction, don’t forget to read the catalogue’s fine print.

Ishmael perfectly epitomized the old art market: He was blind and rich, and he collected works with the abandon of a drunken sailor. Unfortunately, he didn’t fully understand the dynamics of the auction process, which in today’s floundering economy turned out to be a whale of a mistake. Read more…

The attached article is an interview published on January 13, 2009 with Charles Danziger. Keizaikai is one of the most well respected business magazines in Japan.

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When it comes to copyright law, artists and dealers ought to be on the ball.

At last year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, we learned an important lesson: In the game of conceptual art, it pays to listen to the dealer’s pitch. This point was brought home to us at Jeffrey’s booth, where the dealer was exhibiting Fair Ball, a pale green baseball resting on a simple plywood plinth. Jeffrey and his rookie artist, Barnaby “Babe” Woof, wanted to know if the work could be copyrighted, since they planned to make millions by selling thousands of balls. Or was it thousands selling millions of balls? Read more…

When considering insurance for fine art, it pays to carefully examine every facet of your coverage.

Amanda’s problem was crystal clear: She had recently inherited veritable glass menagerie of expensive artworks from her aunt Laura and needed advice on fine-arts insurance. Read more…

But you don’t want to leave it all to the tax man. Given today’s high art values, estate planning is more essential than ever.

After a few too many whiskeys, a wealthy English art collector recently confided to us the crux of his estate tax plan: Following his death, his children had standing instructions to lock up all the good paintings in their castle’s dungeon. Since most of our U.S. clients don’t have castles—and don’t want their heirs locked up in dungeons by the authorities—we advise them to do some thoughtful estate planning to maximize tax benefits and ensure that their art collections end up in the right hands. Here are several approaches to estate tax planning used by collectors today. Read more…

The appeal - and the legal and ethical complications - of buying a museum piece.

Although we tend to view professional conferences as occupational hazards (like long hours and short-tempered opposing counsel), the one on the sale of museum property sounded promising. Deaccessioning is a hot topic, thanks to the need for increasingly cash-strapped museums to find ways to balance their budgets while trying to stay out of the papers—or court. Depending on where one sits, deaccessioning is either the unethical removal and sale of public treasures or a useful means of refining a museum’s collection. Read more…

When it comes to copyright protection, blending art and fashion creates many shades of gray.

What fools we were! We had read about the runway show Gagosian Gallery held during New York’s fall Fashion Week, which featured $4,000 jeans made by Levi Strauss & Co. and decorated with Damien Hirst’s famous skull pattern in Swarovski crystals. We had seen the Richard Prince exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum, where guests were given an opportunity to preorder hand-embroidered Louis Vuitton bags designed by the artist and Marc Jacobs. But we hadn’t yet realized how interwoven the worlds of art and fashion have become. Read more…