VARA Lawsuit Filed Against FIFA After Artist’s Mural Painted Over For World Cup

In June, the Florida-based artist Robert Wyland filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas alleging that FIFA, the City of Dallas, and Slate Asset Management violated his right of integrity under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). Wyland initiated the litigation after learning that his large-scale mural of whales, titled “Ocean Life,” which he painted on the side of a downtown Dallas building in 1999, had been covered in a layer of blue paint to make way for a new mural promoting the World Cup. Dallas was one of the 16 host cities for the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament held across North and South America this past June and July. Wyland is seeking $25 million in damages, an amount that, if awarded, would far exceed the highest damages ever awarded in a VARA lawsuit—the $6.75 million paid to a group of graffiti artists whose works were destroyed at the 5Pointz art site in Queens, New York.

Based on initial filings, it is not yet clear which named party was responsible for the decision to paint over Wyland’s mural. According to FIFA, international soccer’s governing body, it was not involved in the decision. Slate Asset Management, the building owner, meanwhile has stated publicly that the Dallas World Cup organizing committee had advised that the artist was aware of the plans. Wyland maintains this is a “blatant lie.”

Under VARA, the right of integrity allows artists to prevent intentional or grossly negligent destruction of their work, provided it is of a “recognized stature.” While murals are not explicitly enumerated in the statute as “works of visual art,” they are generally considered a form of painting which is a type of work that qualifies for protection. The litigation will likely turn on whether Wyland can establish that “Ocean Life” is a work of “recognized stature,” a term without a fixed legal definition. Courts that have considered this statutory requirement have looked to numerous different factors including: coverage in reputable art publications, documentation of the mural’s role in public art movements or as a city landmark, testimonials from critics, curators, or city leaders about its artistic importance, evidence of its critical acclaim such as an award associated with the mural, and expert opinions from art historians and art critics. As the plaintiff, Wyland bears the burden of proving recognized stature, and this element is likely to be the deciding question in the case.

While the FIFA VARA lawsuit involves a living artist asserting his moral rights, two separate incidents involving deceased artists’ works highlight the legal limitations of protecting an artist’s reputation and vision after their lifetime.

Posthumous Treatment of Ansel Adams and Lucian Freud Artwork Highlights Moral Rights Limitations

The question of who gets to define an artist’s work after they can no longer speak for themselves has arisen in two different contexts recently. First, the Ansel Adams estate, through the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, has publicly opposed AI-colorized versions of his iconic photograph “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico (1941),” arguing that the alterations distort Adams’ artistic vision, more than 40 years after his death. Second, a 1939 portrait, “Man in a Black Scarf,” which Lucian Freud spent his life denying was his work, has gone on display at London’s Garden Museum as an authenticated Freud, 15 years after the artist’s death, based on recently discovered archival evidence that persuaded researchers of the painting’s attribution. While the Adams example involves the estate trying to uphold the artist’s vision after his death, and the Freud example involves an artist’s disavowal of attribution being overturned after death, both underscore the same core issue: control over artistic identity after the life of the artist.

In the United States, moral rights, granting artists the personal right to protect the integrity and attribution of their work, generally do not survive the artist. The Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) is the primary U.S. statute implementing this doctrine, but it covers only a narrower slice of it—the rights of attribution and integrity discussed above, and only for qualifying works of visual art. VARA extends such protection only for the artist’s lifetime. This means that the Adams’ estate cannot object to the AI-colorized images based on moral rights. Its objections must instead be framed through copyright, trademark or reputational stewardship arguments, tools that typically protect economic interests and brand integrity rather than the artist’s personal vision.

Freud’s case illustrates the same principle from the artist’s own vantage point. His denial of the portrait carried legal and reputational weight during his lifetime because he was alive to assert it. Under U.K. law, moral rights, including the right of attribution, persist for 70 years after death, so Freud’s estate arguably could continue asserting his stated wishes well past the artist’s death in 2011. Yet the London museum’s decision to exhibit the work as an authenticated Freud, over the artist’s repeated objections during his lifetime, is a reminder that even where moral rights survive death, they are not absolute; they compete with archival evidence, market interests and institutional decisions about attribution.

Together, these two recent developments underscore how different jurisdictions answer the question of who speaks for an artist once they are gone. In the United States an artist’s objections carry legal weight only during the artist’s lifetime, leaving proxies like estates and trusts to argue economic or reputational harm, not violation of artistic intent. In the U.K., and even more so in France, where moral rights are perpetual, the artist’s voice can theoretically be invoked long after death, giving estates a sharper tool to contest something like AI colorization as a “derogatory treatment” of the work.

As the next case illustrates, protecting an artist’s legacy may pertain not only to the manner in which their artwork is treated after their death but also to who may own it.

Lawsuit Brought By First-Time Collectors To Prevent Revocation Of Sale After Gallery Deemed Them Unfit Stewards

A Swedish American couple are suing a London gallery over a breach of contract involving three 1990s paintings by the late Swedish artist Monica Sjöö. The couple paid £264,000 for the works after seeing them in a 2023 Stockholm retrospective of Sjöö's art, but the gallery and the artist’s estate later moved to revoke the sale, citing concerns that the couple’s adviser had misrepresented their credentials as collectors and doubts about whether the couple would be suitable stewards of the works.

Following completion of the sale, the couple met a representative of the artist’s estate and allegedly told her that they had never bought art before and might never buy again, comments the gallery claims contradicted earlier assurances about the couple’s seriousness as collectors. The gallery’s countersuit alleges the couple intended the paintings for personal display (specifically, as decoration in their children’s bedrooms) rather than to promote the artist’s legacy, which the couple disputes, saying they planned to loan the works to museums. The gallery has since informed the couple that the estate would either release the paintings to them or issue a full refund with interest, but the couple is seeking additional compensation.

The dispute raises broader questions about how far galleries can go in restricting who is allowed to purchase an artist’s work and when those restrictions may be imposed. Galleries commonly use tools like right-of-first-refusal clauses and non-resale restrictions to control who buys their artists’ work, aiming to prevent speculation and protect market conditions, especially for high-value or emerging artists. However, these clauses aren’t always enforceable: U.S. and U.K. courts have inconsistently upheld them, and overly restrictive terms can run afoul of consumer protection laws. To hold up legally, restrictions generally need to be reasonable, clearly stated in the sale agreement, non-discriminatory and compliant with relevant regulations. What sets the current case apart is the fact that the attempted restriction occurred after the gallery had completed the sale.

While the Sjöö dispute centers on who may rightfully possess an artist’s work, the next case shifts the inquiry from ownership to originality, asking not who controls a work, but whether it improperly borrows from someone else’s.

Artist Jeff Koons Successfully Defends Against Copyright Infringement Claim On Timeliness Grounds

In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the Southern District of New York’s summary judgment ruling that a copyright infringement claim brought against artist Jeff Koons was barred by the statute of limitations. Set designer Michael Hayden claimed Koons’ famous “Made in Heaven” series from 1989 depicted a serpent sculpture Hayden had designed in the 1980s. Hayden said he didn’t learn of the alleged infringement until 2019.

Rather than ruling on the merits of fair use, the court dismissed the case on procedural grounds: Hayden had waited too long to sue, exceeding copyright law’s three-year statute of limitations, given that Koons’ artworks had been widely known for decades and Hayden’s own background and Italian ties suggested he should have discovered the infringement sooner (one of the “Made in Heaven” works had been displayed at the Venice Biennale).

The case is notable for its connection to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, a landmark fair-use decision involving Warhol’s silkscreens of a Prince photograph. The court asked both parties to weigh in on how that ruling might affect Hayden’s claims, suggesting, without deciding, that had the case proceeded on the merits, the stricter transformative-use standard set by the Warhol decision might have weakened Koons’ fair-use defense. Instead, the timing issue made that question moot.

Although Koons prevailed on procedural rather than substantive grounds, the underlying tension the case raised—how much an artist may draw from existing material before crossing into infringement—remains. That same question was taken up more directly across the Atlantic, where the EU’s highest court recently offered its own answer.

EU Court Clarifies “Pastiche” Exception On How Much Artists Can Borrow From Existing Works

Norman, Chesin Publish Article in Wealth Management on Art Restitution Ruling

The restitution of Holocaust art demands seriousness, care and humility, and does not justify improvising new legal mechanisms that discard due process in pursuit of speed, Shook Partner Scott Chesin and Senior Counsel Channah Norman argue in an article for Wealth Management.

In “A New Art Restitution Ruling Could Affect Collectors,” Chesin and Norman discuss a dispute centered around a 1916 drawing by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele titled “Russian War Prisoner.” In September 2025, a judge ordered the Art Institute of Chicago, where the drawing had been in the permanent collection for nearly six decades, to surrender it to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret performer who died in Dachau after the Nazis allegedly seized his art collection. Norman and Chesin say the case is a warning for advisors whose clients hold significant art collections. 

“Artwork with even a tenuous New York connection could become subject to seizure proceedings, regardless of where it’s currently held or how long it’s been in a client’s possession,” they say. “That’s a meaningful title-risk exposure that advisors should factor into collection valuations, estate plans and insurance arrangements.”