It has been an unusual year, to say the least, but in one respect, it is business as usual: the art world is still no stranger to legal disputes and its share of controversies. Here are the seven major ones that lit up the feeds this year.
Christie’s Was Attacked by Ransom-Seeking Hackers
Christie’s New York. Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
The timing could not have been worse. In early May, just days before its marquee spring evening auctions that were expected to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, Christie’s website was shut down by hackers.
Clients and other visitors to the website were redirected with a notice indicating that the website was offline and that the auction house was working to resolve the issue. At a time when more and more bidding is communicated online—often by new or younger buyers—not to mention accessing images and information about artworks, the disruption could have spelled disaster.
Christie’s relied on a web design company called Shorthand to create a stopgap where it hosted catalogs of the sales. “Christie’s has in place well-established protocols and practices, which are regularly tested, to manage such incidents,” the auction house said in an emailed statement. “Our executive team, working with a team of internal and external technology experts, is taking all action to resolve this matter as quickly as possible. Christie’s proactively took down some of our systems, including christies.com, to facilitate the work of the I.T. teams. We have communicated to our clients and are keeping them informed. Our focus remains on minimizing disruption to them.”
Days later, on May 15, even with the website still crippled from the cyberattack, Christie’s managed to hold two back-to-back sales of contemporary art, hauling in about $114.7 million in front of a packed house and setting several new artist records.
While the 250-year-old house ran an alternative, barebones website, its online bidding platform, Christie’s Live, was functioning, and bids were rolling in at a steady clip. Inside the elegantly lit salesroom at Rockefeller Center, there was no sign that the house’s tech operations had been thrown into chaos on Thursday night.
Before the sale, Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti managed to joke with reporters about the ongoing issue. “We wanted to do it without I.T. at all,” he deadpanned. At a post-auction news conference, he said that his team has been searching for solutions while reassuring clients.
However, by the end of the month, RansomHub, the group responsible for the hack, threatened and then offered the data at auction. “Let us sell the data by auction,” read RansomHub’s post on the dark web. “We abide by the rules of RansomHub and only sell once… Find something you like in the sample, then contact us.”
According to one report, however, cyber security analysts said it was not cause for alarm, as the data stolen and released is “of minimal threat to Christie’s clientele,” according to The Value. That didn’t stop the filing of a class action lawsuit in early June. It alleged negligence, breach of implied contract, unjust enrichment, and violation of the New York deceptive trade practices act.
The lead plaintiff on the suit, which was filed June 3 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is listed as Efstathios Maroulis, of Dallas, Texas. As the Art Newspaper noted, a person with the same name, based in Dallas, has the title of vice president and general manager of dental analytics and patient experience at a firm identified as Henry Schein One. Maroulis could not immediately be reached for comment. The case, which was in U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, was settled in December.
Collector and Deal Guy Wildenstein Was Sentenced to House Arrest
Guy Wildenstein (center) leaves the Paris courthouse with his lawyer Herve Temime (right) after the second day of his trial on January 6, 2016 in Paris, France. Photo: Chesnot/Getty Images.
In March, after years of pursuit by prosecutors and no shortage of strange twists and turns, Guy Wildenstein, the 78-year-old billionaire and patriarch of the French art dealing dynasty, was found guilty of money laundering and tax fraud.
He was sentenced by the Paris Appeals Court to four years in prison. However, Wildenstein isn’t doing any real time behind bars. Instead, he will spend two years under house arrest with a bracelet monitor, while the other half of his sentence has been suspended.
Wildenstein was also ordered to pay a fine of about $1.08 million on top of all taxes he owes the French government. Authorities seized €3.4 million (about $3.6 million) of his assets. Seven other defendants were also convicted, including his nephew Alec Wildenstein Jr. and his former sister-in-law, Liouba Stoupakova.
Prosecutors alleged that Wildenstein attempted to avoid paying millions in inheritance taxes after the death of his father, Daniel, in 2001. Guy and his brother Alec were said to have far underreported the real value of the estate including omitting properties in Kenya and the Virgin Islands, alongside an art collection believed to be worth billions. Later, in 2008, when Alec died, Guy was accused of underreporting the value of that estate as well.
Inigo Philbrick Gets Out of Jail
Inigo Philbrick. ©Patrick McMullan Photo – Liam McMullan / PMC
In February, disgraced art dealer Inigo Philbrick was released from a federal prison in Allenwood, Pennsylvania, after serving less than four years of a seven-year sentence for a massive art fraud estimated to have cost his victims $86 million.
Prosecutors in New York said Philbrick committed “one of the most significant frauds in the art market in history.” He pleaded guilty to wire fraud in November 2021 and was sentenced to prison in May 2022.
Philbrick had been in custody since June 2020, when he was captured on the remote South Pacific island of Vanuatu. He fled there in late 2019—after stops in Australia and French territory New Caledonia as lawsuits, fraud claims, and international asset-seizure orders began piling up. When he fled the U.S., where he had established a Miami gallery, he left behind the shuttered space, as well as one in London, U.K. He claimed he believed that there were only civil claims against him and was unaware of pending criminal investigation or charges. As part of his sentence, he has to pay restitution to his victims of $86 million.
Philbrick’s first post-prison photo, in an expansive feature in Vanity Fair, had him sporting a gray collared sweater and standing against a wood-barn backdrop, looking more like a GQ model than someone fresh from federal prison stint. He told Vanity Fair writer Mark Seal: “The art world is unregulated.” He expressed a desire to return to the world of art dealing.
Hunter Biden Is Pardoned by His Dad
Hunter Biden outside the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building in Wilmington, Delaware, 2024. Photo: Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images.
At the start of this month, just days left in his single-term presidency, U.S. President Joseph Biden shocked many with news that he granted his son Hunter a full and unconditional pardon, waiving any potential punishment stemming from a federal conviction for illegally buying a gun and for tax evasion charges. Why is this an art story? Because Hunter is a budding artist—that’s why.
Further enraging his critics, the move marked a complete 180-degree move for President Biden, who repeatedly insisted in the past that he would not pardon his son when asked by journalists and others if he would respect and accept the final decision of courts.
In early September, Hunter pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles to a nine-count indictment, including three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses. He was due to be sentenced on December 16.
Biden stated that he granted the pardon because the charges were “politically driven.”
According to President Biden: “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son—and that is wrong,” read his statement, as quoted in the New York Times.
Hunter Biden has often been at the center of controversy as a result of his well-documented struggles with addiction, romantic relationships that have served as tabloid fodder, and questionable business ties. His fine art career, begun in recent years, has also been rife with debate: a 2021 solo show at Soho-based Georges Bergès Gallery, for one, sparked criticism and questions about whether buyers of the artist’s works should be outed for transparency reasons.
In a 2021 interview with Artnet columnist Katya Kazakina, Hunter said of his father: “My dad loves everything that I do, and so, I’ll leave it at that.” Her column at the time focused solely on his art, at his request.
Cancelations in Germany
Visitors attend the exhibition “This Will Not End Well” by photographer Nan Goldin at Neue Nationalgalerie, on November 23, 2024 in Berlin. Photo: Adam Berry/Getty Images.
Candice Breitz was among the cultural workers and artists who had lost opportunities to show their work this year due to statements made about Palestine. Since October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, the German government has drawn a hard line on criticism of Israel or its government’s actions. In early 2024, the activist group Strike Germany called on culture workers to boycott German cultural institutions as a “call to refuse [their] use of McCarthyist policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine,” according to their Instagram.
In November, Nan Goldin’s exhibition, “This Will Not End Well” at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie became embroiled in a debate due to an associated symposium titled “Art and Activism in Times of Polarization.” Goldin had criticized the event for linking her work to discussions on antisemitism and Islamophobia without her consent, while the museum simultaneously tried to separate her personal politics from her work. Her public disapproval ahead of her opening led to withdrawals by participants, including artist Hito Steyerl and Breitz. The museum clarified that the symposium was separate from Goldin’s retrospective, and it took place with a changed speaker list.
At her opening, Goldin delivered a fiery speech decrying the war and what she called censorship in Germany; museum director Klaus Biesenbach was shouted down by protestors. It emerged after the opening that Goldin had also been disallowed from adding a slide to one of her video installations expressing mourning for the loss of life on October 7 and in Gaza.
Damien Hirst Backdating
Damien Hirst in 2022. Photo: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images
The mega art star Damien Hirst came under scrutiny this year after a report in the Guardian stated that three of his iconic formaldehyde tank sculptures, featuring preserved animals, were backdated to appear as though they were created in the 1990s, despite being signed off as having been made in 2017. These works, including Cain and Abel (1994), Dove (1999), and Myth Explored, Explained, Exploded (1993–99), have been displayed in galleries and museums globally, from New York to Munich, with dates attributed to the 1990s.
According to the Guardian, the sculptures were supposedly made by Hirst’s team at his Gloucestershire workshop in 2017 and debuted at Gagosian Hong Kong that year; the show was promoted as showcasing works from the “early to mid-1990s.”
Hirst’s studio, Science Ltd., defended the dating, arguing that the sculptures’ dates reflect their conceptual creation rather than their physical production. However, Hirst’s lawyers acknowledged inconsistencies in his dating practices, suggesting that artists often apply flexible dating methods to their work.
The controversy raised concerns about transparency in the art business (though we have been concerned about this for a while), especially when it comes to the trading of valuable works of art. Hirst’s formaldehyde works are some of the most sought-after in contemporary art, with record sales like The Golden Calf (2008) fetching $18.6 million.
The Closure of the Israeli pavilion in Venice
Flyers distributed by ANGA activist group during a protest against the Israel pavilion in the Giardini at the 60th Venice Biennale. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
One of the biggest stories out of the Venice Biennale this year was a work that was not on view. The Israeli Pavilion at the Venice Biennale remained closed for the duration of the exhibition, with a sign stating it would only open when a cease-fire and hostage release agreement were reached in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. The decision was made by Israeli artist Ruth Patir and curators Tamar Margalit and Mira Lapidot.
It was not enough for some pro-Palestinian groups who amplified their criticism of Israel’s presence at the Biennale, closed or open.
The Art Not Genocide Alliance had issued a letter demanding Israel’s exclusion earlier in the year, which Italy’s culture minister dismissed, defending Israel’s right to participate. During the preview days of the Venice Biennale in April, a protest took place where flyers supporting Palestine were dispersed. Some criticized the fact that visitors could still glimpse her project, (M)otherland, through locked pavilion windows. Security measures were heightened at the Israeli Pavilion, reflecting the tensions.
Patir, who was announced as Israel’s representing artist before the October 7 Hamas attacks, defended her decision to keep her pavilion closed, stating her opposition to cultural boycotts, while aligning her work with calls for peace in the region.
(M)otherland, which addresses patriarchal pressures on motherhood within the context of Israel, juxtaposes personal themes with a broader commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, using fragmented fertility goddess sculptures to convey anguish. The work was acquired by the Jewish Museum in New York and will go on view in 2025.
