Jack Kevorkian artwork dispute settled

PanARMENIAN.Net - Art by suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian will be shared by his niece and a Boston-area art gallery, ending an ownership dispute, his executor said, according to UPI.

Attorney Mayer Morganroth, executor of Kevorkian's estate, confirmed an agreement had been reached between the estate and the Armenian Library and Museum of Watertown, Mass.

Kevorkian, who died at 83 in 2011, entrusted the collection of 17 paintings, many containing disturbing and grotesque images and some believed to include his own blood as a painting medium, to the museum in 1999, before he was sentenced to prison for assisting in a suicide. The collection has been valued at more than $2 million.

Morgenroth filed suit in Oakland County, Mich., Circuit Court last year, seeking the return of the artwork. The lawsuit was dismissed after the museum countersued in federal court, claiming it owned the artwork, court documents said.

The agreement provides for the museum to keep four works and the remainder to be retained by the estate for Kevorkian's niece, Ava Janus of Troy, Mich., Morganroth said.