It’s back, like a double-edged dagger — an éperon — Nietzsche style.  Back by popular demand, and now going on its third year, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts‘ legendary, ground-breaking, and no-holds-barred educational series for visual artists.

“Informative, thought-provoking, enlightening, sensical. These things should be taught in art school, but I’m glad I learned them here!” notes one artist. “Pure deliciousness. Challenging, spicy, enlightening,” notes another. Read (and see) what other past participants have said here.

Although fees are now attached, artists can register for individual classes or the entire series. Course starts March 20, 2012

Law School for Visual Artists

Topics that will be covered during the 5-week course:

Tuesday March 20, 2012
Introduction:
• Legal Hypothetical: Analyzing legal issues in your art projects

Tuesday March 27, 2012
• Basic business models (non-profit and for-profit corporations, LLC’s)
• Fiscal Sponsorships
• Employment issues
A. Studio and gallery assistants
B. Working as a preparator for art galleries

Tuesday April 3, 2012
• Free Speech
• Right of Privacy

Tuesday April 10, 2012
Contracts
• Consignment Agreements
• Licensing Agreements
• Commissioning Agreements

Tuesday April 17, 2012
• Intellectual Property (copyright and trademarks)

Click here to register for this course (or just one or two classes).

Art journalist Sarah Thornton, who writes for the New Yorker, the Economist and Artforum and is author of the popular book Seven Days in the Art World, has won £65,000 ($106, 736 US) in damages against the Telegraph Media Group, publisher of the Daily Telegraph. London’s high court found that a 2008 review in the Daily Telegraph of Thornton’s book, by journalist Lynn Barber, contained two factual “errors,” amounting to libel and malicious falsehood.

The Daily Telegraph plans to appeal. Via Artnet.

Many times artists will write, and publish, their autobiography. I often get asked by artists if it’s ok to disclose private details of their lives if it includes private affairs and details of others (lovers, parents, children, friends, co-workers, etc). This is a highly complicated issue and one that usually, as with fair use, ends with the answer, “it depends.”

Attorney and blogger Mark Fowler has just posted a nice and succinct article, Can You Tell Your Own True Story Even If It Impinges on the Privacy of Your Lovers, Friends, and Family? regarding just this issue on his blog, Rights of Writers. Check it out.

Enrico Navarra, a French art dealer, is suing New York’s  Marlborough Gallery with a suit charging it mounted a “smear campaign” against his business. Navarra’s Manhattan federal court filing accuses Marlborough of “attempted monopolization,” false advertising and defamation.

Via The New York Post.

This current mess between artist and institution illustrates once again the weakness art faces when confronted by law.

P.S.1 is currently deciding whether or not they will allow one of their exhibiting artists to include an element of her project in her installation. This time, the element is neither material or text, but rather another artist.  Let’s call it a medium then (but not the telepathetic kind).

Artist A.L. Steiner (s0 many abbreviations) intends to invite Ann Liv Young, a P.S.1 persona-non-grata, to be part of Steiner’s installation. Obviously P.S.1 is having a bit of a problem with this given  Young’s previous P.S.1 charade which escalated to near-violent confrontations with other artists. Allegations of censorship have been hurled at P.S.1 curator Klaus Biesenbach, accusing him of castrating young artistic expression.

Aside from the fact that we have seen this before (read: Futurists), what makes this story interesting is not the art or performances themselves, nor the accusations of censorship. No, what makes this story interesting is that it raises the legal concerns an institution such as MoMA P.S.1 had, has, and will have, when confronted with possible legal action from parties related and unrelated to the exhibition.

Young has acknowledged seeking legal advice as to Steiner’s contractual agreement with MoMA P.S.1, which clearly reflects the concerns MoMA P.S.1 has in protecting itself, its employees, staff, agents, attorneys and, well, you get the picture. So perhaps at the end of the day the question is not, will P.S.1 censor or liberate? The true question is, will P.S.1 abide by its contract?

Once again, art as art has shown to bow before law, the mighty monster.

UPDATE: August 31, 2010

The paper of record reports that P.S.1 has agreed to allow Young to perform. Details here.

According to the WSJ, that’s a big fat “yes.”

Deb Margolin recently wrote a play called “Imagining Madoff” that purported to offer audiences a fictional version of the relationship between Mr. Wiesel, the Nobel Prize-winning author and Holocaust survivor, and Bernie Madoff, the arch-swindler who purloined vast amounts of money from Mr. Wiesel, his wife and the couple’s charitable foundation. … Then Ms. Margolin sent a copy of the script to Mr. Wiesel, who promptly replied that he found it “defamatory” and “obscene” and threatened to sue in order to prevent it from being performed at “any time in any venue.”

According to the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research,

Brandeis University is contemplating suing Harper’s Magazine for slander or defamation for the article “Voodoo Academics: Brandeis University’s hard lesson in the real economy” in the magazine’s November issue[.]

Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz wrote in an e-mail: “We recognize that the legal process for slander/defamation is an arduous task and one that is difficult to prove; however, we feel that some affirmative course of action must be taken to protect the reputation of Brandeis given that this article is likely to have circulation on the Internet far beyond the circulation numbers of Harper’s.”

You can read the entire story and Reinharz’s e-mail here.

We’ll be in London this coming Wednesday through Friday for a media law conference, International Developments in Libel, Privacy Newsgathering and New Media Law, organized by the Media Law Resource Center. We’ll provide a report after the conference.
Among the topics to be discussed are:

• Liability for third-party content posted online in the UK and Europe
• Libel Terrorism Protection Acts and enforcement of judgments
• The right to be left alone in public – the continuing evolution of the Princess Caroline privacy decision
• Reporting on terrorism: How has the fight against terrorism impacted reporting?
• The Future of Free Expression: How is the Internet impacting the law of free expression?
• Fair use and fair dealing in the digital media environment