Most-favored-photographer status for Ansel Adams at Yosemite National Park apparently goes back at least as far as 1941, and includes documented special treatment by the Department of the Interior. This included a waiver enabling him to draw down a federal government salary while also enjoying the profits from best’s Studio, his concession at Yosemite ― a conflict of interest according to the policy of the Department of the Interior. […]
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William Turnage ― who earns his handsome salary from the Trust on the presumption that he understands what a Trust’s regulations do and don’t allow ― didn’t know that a trustee can’t revoke a Trust’s provisions on whim. Thus, while Turnage clearly didn’t intend his attack on Katharine Martinez and the Center for Creative Photography as ineffectual, it turned out that way ― due to his ignorance and professional incompetence. Which inefficacy he now claims as a defense. The mind boggles. […] William “Wild Bill” Turnage, Managing Trustee of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, has publicly gone into full CYA mode. Turnage wants to reverse the now-widespread perception of himself as a vindictive thug, consequent to the scandalous disclosure of his despicable manipulation of Katharine Martinez, director of the Center for Creative Photography, and his corruption of the administration of the University of Arizona-Tucson, whose library system houses and governs the CCP. […] Going full-steam-ahead into Year Two of the brouhaha over “the lost negatives of Ansel Adams,” Team Norsigian has added the University of Arizona as a defendant in its countersuit against the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. This inclusion of the UofA in the countersuit comes as no surprise. In fall 2010 Arnold Peter, legal counsel for Rick Norsigian, forced the disclosure of a chain of email correspondence between William “Wild Bill” Turnage, Managing Trustee of the Adams Trust, and various functionaries at the Center for Creative Photography and the UofA (which houses the CCP). That correspondence makes it absolutely clear that Turnage blackmailed the CCP’s newly installed director, Katharine Martinez, into reluctantly signing an inappropriate and prejudicial public statement discrediting Norsigian’s claims regarding the glass-plate negatives he bought at a yard sale in Fresno and has attributed to Ansel Adams. […] |
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Norsigian/Adams: Game Over?
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’ve asked the Court to dismiss the Trust’s complaint and Team Norsigian’s counterclaim without prejudice. 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) that they will continue to press their lawsuit against the University of Arizona-Tucson charging illegal civil conspiracy. […]