Diane Arbus Photograph Auction Cancelled Over Lawsuit
Published April 10th, 2008
A lawyer for the owner of a group of rare, early prints by the photographer Diane Arbus said on Wednesday that the auction house Phillips de Pury canceled the sale because of concerns about a recent lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was duped out of the prints.
A Brooklyn collector has sued the photographs’ current owner, saying he didn’t know the images were the famed photographer’s work when he agreed to sell them for about $3,500.
Peter R. Stern, the lawyer for the prints’ owner, Bob Langmuir, a Philadelphia book dealer and collector, said the auction house told him that a private sale of the photos, worth up to several hundred thousand dollars, was a possibility.
