Norsigian/Adams: Game Over?

Breaking news: The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, PRS Media Partners, LLC and Rick Norsigian appear to have decided to bury the hatchets ― or at least to have achieved a Mexican standoff. They released the following “Joint Statement” on Monday, March 14:

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JOINT STATEMENT BY THE ANSEL ADAMS PUBLISHING RIGHTS TRUST, RICK NORSIGIAN AND PRS MEDIA PARTNERS, LLC REGARDING SETTLEMENT OF LITIGATION

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SAN FRANCISCO AND LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
MARCH 14, 2011

On August 23, 2010, The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust filed a civil complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against PRS Media Partners, LLC and Rick Norsigian. On December 28, 2010, Rick Norsigian and PRS Media Partners filed a Counterclaim against the Trust in the same court.

The parties deny the validity of the claims brought against them. PRS Media and Norsigian believe that sixty five glass plate negatives purchased by Rick Norsigian were created by Ansel Adams, and prepared a report they believe authenticated the Negatives as being created by Ansel Adams. The Trust disputes the conclusions of the report and that the Negatives were created by Ansel Adams.

The parties have now agreed to resolve these disputes and have entered into a confidential settlement agreement in which each side assumes its own costs and fees in connection with the claims. Under said agreement, Rick Norsigian and PRS Media agree to not use Ansel Adams’ name or likeness or the ANSEL ADAMS trademark in connection with the sales, promotion or advertisement of negatives, prints, posters, or other merchandise based on negatives. Norsigian and PRS Media may continue to sell negatives, prints, posters and other merchandise associated with negatives, subject to a disclaimer approved by The Trust, and provided they do so in a manner consistent with state and federal law. Further, both parties have agreed not to make any defamatory statements about the other or unlawfully interfere in each other’s businesses. As a result of the agreement, the parties today submitted a joint request asking the Court to dismiss the complaint and counterclaim without prejudice.

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As I write this, on the morning of March 15, Team Norsigian’s “Final Report of Investigative Team,” titled “The Lost Negatives of Ansel Adams” and replete with claims of having authenticated these works as Adams’s creations beyond any reasonable doubt, remains online. Presumably that will come down shortly, so download your free copy now. (I have it archived, so you can find it here once it goes offline.)

That will seriously deplete the already thinned content at Rick Norsigian’s website, which got more cautiously renamed The Lost Negatives awhile back. Looking through it now, and subtracting the “Final Report,” I can see that someone coming to the site for the first time would have absolutely no idea what this was about. Absent the backstory, it comes across as much ado about nothing. Team Norsigian now faces the daunting task of replacing the earlier content, with its headline-friendly claims of $200 million in market value and absolute proof of Adams’s authorship.

All the other reports and press releases there have already vanished, leaving only the delightfully melodramatic trailer for the planned documentary films and a few slideshows of public events at the Beverly Hills gallery of convicted felon David W. Streets. Of these, I’m particularly fond of one undated event billed as “THE LOST NEGATIVES EXHIBITION FOR THE LOS ANGELES DIPLOMATIC CORPS,” an otherwise unidentified delegation consisting of Streets, Norsigian attorney Arnold Peter, and a gaggle of what Tom Wolfe dubbed “culture buds.”

Arnold Peter with the Los Angeles Diplomatic Corps, 2010

So Norsigian’s site will not serve as an archive of this debacle, making Photocritic International the most complete permanent repository of material on this story. You’ll find links to the relevant documents embedded in the reports I’ve posted, listed here sequentially. Should any of these links go inactive, with the material taken offline or made otherwise unavailable, I’ll replace it with a PDF of the document. And of course I’ll update the story as it evolves, since it has yet to run its course.

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Speaking of which, a spokesperson for Team Norsigian has assured me that (a) the team’s authentication efforts will continue ― under the guidance of recognized experts, one hopes, and involving strict forensic testing ― and (b) they will continue to press their lawsuit against the University of Arizona-Tucson charging illegal civil conspiracy.

Some predictions from Photocritic International:

Katharine Martinez, incoming CCP Director.

• Team Norsigian and the UofA-Tucson will come to an out-of-court settlement, with the UofA issuing an apology for the Center of Creative Photography’s definitely inappropriate and probably illegal siding with the Adams Trust in this situation. Although the UofA clearly forced incoming CCP Director Katharine Martinez to sign this declaration (the statement was drafted by the UofA’s legal counsel, not by Martinez), none of those bureaucratic weasels will actually take responsibility for the statement, leaving the lingering perception that it was not just voluntary on Martinez’s part but actually her fault.
• Having discovered that her new employers will not only never have her back but will throw her to the wolves when under pressure, incoming CCP Director Katharine Martinez will put in a year or two at the Center to save face and pretend that all’s well, and then get the hell out of Tucson.
• The UofA and the CCP will then undertake yet another international search to fill that seat. Even in a depressed economy, they’ll find no reputable takers for that publicly compromised position until they issue a formal statement creating an unbreachable firewall between the CCP, the UofA library system’s administration, and the Adams Trust.
• Carla Stoffle, UofA Dean of Libraries and Dean of the CCP, who betrayed her own office in general and Martinez in particular by kowtowing cravenly to the demands of the bellicose William “Wild Bill” Turnage of the Adams Trust, will retire in a year or so. This blot on her escutcheon will loom large in her legacy.
• John P. Schaefer, former president of the UofA-Tucson and co-founder (with Adams) of the CCP, who in a blatant conflict of interest serves as both a trustee of the Adams Trust and a member of the CCP’s “Board of Fellows,” and who also betrayed Martinez, will discreetly resign from the “Board of Fellows” at the end of his current year of service. This blot on his escutcheon will loom large in his legacy, unfortunately tarnishing the major accomplishment that the CCP itself represents.

William Turnage of the Ansel Adams Trust

• Having demonstrated in action his conviction that extremism in the defense of trademark and revenues is no vice, William “Wild Bill” Turnage of the Adams Trust will issue no public apologies for any of his appalling behavior in this situation. He will remain in his position as Managing Trustee for several more years, the Trust’s main beneficiaries ― Ansel and Virginia’s two children, Michael Adams and Anne Adams Helms — thereby manifesting their commitment to stand by their man.
• The aforementioned Michael Adams, who receives 45 percent of the revenues from the Adams Trust while also serving with John P. Schaefer as a member of the CCP’s “Board of Fellows,” will resolve this blatant conflict of interest by discreetly resigning from that board at the end of his current year of service.
• The Tucson press — the Tucson Daily Citizen, the Arizona Daily Star, and the Arizona Daily Wildcat — will continue to ignore this story. This will only enhance the perception that they’re all in the pocket of the UofA-Tucson.
• Team Norsigian will at long last undertake expert examination of the Norsigian negatives via one of the controversial “authentication consults” that the CCP offers. This will get filmed, to ensure that no hanky-panky takes place on either side. The results will prove inconclusive.
• Brooke Delarco, the step-granddaughter of photographer Earl Brooks, will get off light on the charge that she smuggled 5 kilos of doobie into Pennsylvania for resale purposes. The court will decide that putting a 60-year-old woman in the slammer for this offense makes no sense. Delarco will get sentenced to community service, enabling her to continue her researches into her adoptive grandfather’s relation to the Norsigian negatives. Those researches will prove inconclusive, though we’ll know a lot more about Brooks when she’s done.

Honoré de Balzac. Painting after a Daguerréotype by Louis-Auguste Bisson, 1842.

• The indefatigable Chicago-based pair I’ve dubbed the “Pillsbury Doughgirls” — journalist Melinda Pillsbury-Foster and photographer/researcher Charlotte Anjelica Kieltyka — will uncover incontrovertible evidence that Pillsbury-Foster’s grandfather, Arthur C. Pillsbury, made the Norsigian negatives. This will be followed by disclosures confirming Honoré de Balzac’s claim that “The secret of grand fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done.” (“Le secret des grandes fortunes sans cause apparente est un crime oublié, parce qu’il a été proprement fait.” — Le Père Goriot, 1835.)
• Unable thereafter to continue marketing any derivatives of the negatives he found at that Y2K yard sale (because the copyright laws will apply thereto as soon as the maker’s identified), Rick Norsigian will sell the negs to a California museum for an undisclosed sum in the high five figures, recouping some of his investment in this elaborate process and verifying that he did at least recognize and salvage something of true artistic significance, providing a service to the medium of photography and earning himself a footnote in its history.
• Gallerist David W. Streets will count the column inches and go on his merry way, continuing to sell expensive bad art to Hollywood figures who don’t know any better and believe no less firmly than he does in self-reinvention.
• Arnold Peter of PRS Media Partners will make a bloody fortune as a media and IP attorney.
• The “Lost Negatives” film will eventually get finished. It’ll end up on YouTube within six months of its release.

We’ll revisit these forecasts in a year, to see how well I’ve done as a prognosticator.

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My congratulations to Charlotte Burns, whose report on this situation for March 2011 issue of The Art Newspaper constitutes the first serious coverage of this story in the art press. See “Legal row escalates over ‘lost’ Adams photographs,” datelined March 9 in the online edition.

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For an index of links to all previous posts related to this story, click here.

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This post supported by a donation from Barbara Rachko.