Heirs of real estate titan Sheldon Solow fumed that a longtime critic was hijacking the late mogul’s title for an on line spoof of their off-boundaries art gallery — but an arbitrator stated the family members painted itslef into a corner by not trademarking the name.
New York art-planet gadfly Ethan Arnheim started Solowfoundation.org in 2017 to ridicule the point that the street-amount gallery at Solow’s towering 9 West 57th St. — that includes masterpieces by Matisse, Miro, Giacometti, section of Solow’s 50 percent-billion-dollar collection — is tax-exempt but closed to the general public.
Arnheim’s parody web-site lists the gallery’s hours of procedure for all 7 days of the week as, for example, “inaccessible,” “closed,” “not open” and “absolutely not.”
The heading on Arnheim’s web site is “Solow Artwork and Architecture Basis,” though the gallery was renamed the Soloviev Foundation following Solow’s demise.
A fed-up Stefan Soloviev, who heads up Solow’s real estate empire subsequent his father’s loss of life in 2020 at age 92, brought a scenario in opposition to Arnheim to the Earth Worldwide Property Business (WIPO), a UN-affiliated agency that displays domain-identify use.
But late last month, WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Middle dominated that the spouse and children “failed to give proof that Mr. Solow’s title, or the identify of the Solow Basis, have been utilized in a trademark way.”
Moreoever, WIPO claimed that Arnheim hardly ever tried out to make cash off his parody internet site, which he stated was just meant to connect with interest to the gallery’s tax-exempt position.
“Using rates of cybersquatting, the Solow heirs tried using to choose the Net web site from me,” Arnheim informed The Post.
The gallery’s locked doorways have lengthy vexed passers-by on West 57th Street and art-earth insiders, which includes Arnheim, who suggests its tax-exempt standing ought to require it to be accessible to all.
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The main painters and sculptors can only be considered through glare-crammed windows struggling with the sidewalk.
Previous Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer once tweeted that the showroom’s tax-exempt standing was “outrageous.”
Asked regardless of whether the Solows would acquire the case to a US court, Hayden Soloviev, a son of Stefan Soloviev, said, “My father has bigger issues to offer with than some bored individual and his faux World wide web web page, and I’m sure he’ll deal with it when his obligations of jogging an eight-area conglomerate allow him to.
“But yes, the enterprise will get even more action on this make any difference.”
Hayden Soloviev told The Submit past 12 months that the firm designs to open up the gallery to the general public later on this year just after remodeling is concluded. He also denied revealed experiences that the tower was for sale.
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