Museums | Director General of the National Gallery: Kiasma did not adequately investigate the legality of the donation of works

Kiasma has accepted donations of works without sufficiently investigating the ownership of the works, says the director general of the National Gallery Kimmo Läva for HS.

The professor of criminal law assessed on Thursday In Ilta-Sanomi’s storythat the rights of the heir may have been bypassed when Kiasma took over Markus Copperin works.

Copper died in 2019. He did not marry, but had a Swede Give Stake with the son in 2009. According to the order of inheritance, Copper’s works belong to the son.

However, Stake donated three of Copper’s significant but in poor condition works to Kiasma. After a laborious and expensive conservation process, Kiasma has estimated the works to be worth a total of 210,000 euros. In addition, Kiasma received drawings from Copper’s parents, which they had found in their home after the boy’s death. The museum estimates the drawings to be worth a total of 45,000 euros.

According to IS, Kiasma did not clarify the right of Stake or the parents to donate the works. Both Finnish and Swedish laws prohibit a trustee or guardian from donating property of a minor child.

“Basically we assume that the donor has the right to donate,” says Kimmo Levä, CEO of the National Gallery, to Helsingin Sanomat. Kiasma is part of the National Gallery.

“But of course the ownership of the works should be clarified. Based on newspaper information, it seems that this has not been done sufficiently.”

According to Leva, next, the National Gallery will go through the contracts related to Copper’s works with a lawyer. In addition, Kansallisgalleria is refining its reception processes related to donations of works.

Kiasma museum director Leevi Haapala emphasized in an interview with Ilta-Sanomi that donating the sculptures to Kiasma was specifically the request of Anna Stake and her son’s guardian. There was no discussion about the possible value of the works, Haapala said.

Haapala responded by e-mail to HS’s question about the donation rights of the works.

“The most important thing for us was rescuing works that were about to be destroyed, which the family could not afford to do or to store works in poor condition. In this donation, as in all others, the gift certificates were reviewed by the legal advisors of both sides, the National Gallery and the donor, of whom the guardian of the artist’s son is a family law lawyer. I trusted that it was all right. In the future, we will require the donor to see the certificate of origin or a similar document.”

Haapala emphasizes that an art expert is not a legal expert.

It is not known that the authorities are investigating the matter. In the case of a guardian or trustee, the donation could possibly be assessed as an abuse of a position of trust, professor of criminal and procedural law Matti Tolvanen evaluates Ilta-Sanom.

Tolvanen told IS that the recipient of the gift is not guilty of a crime, unless he has misled the giver of the gift, for example by claiming that the gift is worthless.