Artist Files Suit Over Missing Empire State Building Paintings; New York Times, 1/31/14

Randy Kennedy, New York Times; Artist Files Suit Over Missing Empire State Building Paintings:

"The paintings, by the New York artist Kysa Johnson, were commissioned by the building’s owners and installed in 2000. But last year, art collectors visiting the building to see the pieces could not find them and told Ms. Johnson, who asked the building’s current owner, the Empire State Realty Trust, what had happened to them. According to a lawsuit the artist filed this week in federal court in New York, the trust told her that the paintings “could not be located, were likely destroyed and therefore could not be returned to” her.

The suit — which says that Ms. Johnson retained ownership of the paintings under her commissioning contract — is unusual because it is not simply a property-loss case but is being pursued under the Visual Artists Rights Act, a copyright protection put into place in 1991 that safeguards the moral rights of artists against distortion, mutilation or destruction of their work."