Art & Law Workshop: Fiduciary Duties of Gallerists
November 12, 2024
About the Event
Join the Center for Art Law along with attorney Richard Lehun, Founding member of Stropheus, in this event where we dove into the complex world of fiduciary duties for gallerists. This workshop explored the fiduciary duties of gallerists toward their clients. Richard clarified the distinctions between contract-based relationships and the broader fiduciary obligations gallerists owe, including transparency, prudence, and the prohibition of undisclosed profits. He also examined common conflicts of interest in the art world and how these fiduciary duties come into play. The workshop focused on the legal framework governing consignment agreements and artist representation, with particular attention to the 2012 Artist-Dealer Legislation and New York’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Law. Case studies, such as the Salander-O’Reilly Gallery fraud, highlighted the consequences of fiduciary breaches.
About the Speaker
Richard Lehun is a Founding member of Stropheus, a New York-based legal and business collective for the arts. He is responsible for transactions involving fiduciary duties and conflicts of interest, particularly those relating to artist-gallery relations, artist commissions, art advising, consignor-auction house relations, gallery, museum, auction house, and non-profit ethics. He also works in the area of arts-related intellectual property issues, including copyright and trademark. Richard Lehun completed his JD and then moved directly to the SJD program at McGill University. He gathered practical legal experience with Léger Robic Richard, Montréal’s respected intellectual property practitioner. While a teaching fellow at McGill’s law faculty, Richard Lehun was cross-appointed as a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School.
Richard Lehun studied under Jürgen Habermas at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main on a DAAD Scholarship and completed his Magister Artium on Adorno’s Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory. During his studies in Frankfurt, he was admitted to the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie (dffb) for studies in film and television directing. His self-financed graduating film, Fetisch, was awarded the German National Film Prize (Bundesfilmpreis).
He also teaches art law and lectures at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
