The Castagnoli-Cushman reaction of oximes, discovered originally for homophthalic anhydride, stimulated the search for other cyclic anhydrides that would be workable in that reaction. Finally, 3-arylglutaconic acid anhydrides were identified as displaying the right reactivity towards a wide range of oximes (including those which did not react with homophthalic anhydride, such as derivatives of aliphatic aldehydes or ketones and substrates with nucleophilic side groups) and delivering, after 18 h at 110 °C in DMSO, β,γ-unsaturated N-hydroxylactam products lacking the carboxylic acid functionality as the result of decarboxylation accompanying the cyclocondensation process. The reaction was found to be scalable to gram quantities of the starting anhydrides. The products were shown to be easily amenable to post-condensational double-bond transposition or reduction. As expected from cyclic hydroxamic acids, the reaction products were shown to bind Fe(iii) and Cu(ii) ions (selectively out of a panel of 16 metal cations) and potentially serve as fluorescent metal sensors.