Art & Law Workshop: Fiduciary Duties of Gallerists

Join the Center for Art Law along with attorney Richard Lehun, Founding member of Stropheus, as we delve into the complex world of fiduciary duties for gallerists. This workshop will explore the fiduciary duties of gallerists toward their clients. It will clarify the distinctions between contract-based relationships and the broader fiduciary obligations gallerists owe, including transparency, prudence, and the prohibition of undisclosed profits. It will also examine common conflicts of interest in the art world and how these fiduciary duties come into play. The workshop will focus 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, will highlight the consequences of fiduciary breaches.

This workshop is part of a series of three workshops focused on fiduciary duties. The following session will focus on fiduciary duties of trustees for artist estates.

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.

Event Venue

Online