HOW WILL LEHMANN V. THE PROJECT AFFECT THE ART MARKET?

Lehmann v. The Project Worldwide is the first lawsuit ever to come to court over a collector’s thwarted access to contemporary art, Christopher Mason reports in New York. The case hinges on an unusual agreement: In February 2001, art dealer Christian Haye approached collector Jean-Pierre Lehmann and asked him to invest $75,000 in his gallery, the Project. In exchange, Lehmann would receive a 30 percent discount on his purchases from the Project until he had racked up an aggregate of $100,000 in discounts. To sweeten the deal, Haye also offered Lehmann a right of first refusal on any work by any artist sold by the gallery, but the arrangement went awry, according to Lehmann, when Haye declined to give his investor the one thing he kept asking for—and that other buyers seemed to be getting: large paintings by Julie Mehretu.