On the proposed Los Angeles City ordinance. On a public hearing concerning the proposed ordinance. And on whether the proposed ordinance should refer to murals as fine art and not commercial signs, and whether murals should have moral rights protection under California law and the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act.

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).

Interested in the Visual Artists Rights Act and moral rights? The Texas Law Review and its online companion publication, See Also, have just published a student note and a professorial reply concerning moral rights.  The student Note, Moral Rights: Well-Intentioned Protection and its Unintended Consequences, analyzes the concept and focuses serious criticism on the right of integrity.Professor Robert C. Bird replies in his essay, Of Geese, Ribbons, and Creative Destruction: Moral Rights and its Consequences.

Bird applauds Lindsey A. Mills’s reasoned criticisms and additions to the academic debate.  However, Professor Bird concludes by recognizing the “artistic doomsday rhetoric” that has been levied against moral rights and argues in favor of a measured approach to the issue.

Iona Harding and Emily Sweetland, both Baker & McKenzie LLP associates, review Mira T. Sundara Rajan’s new book, Moral Rights: Principles, Practice and New Technology. Here’s a snippet of the review, via the 1709 blog:

To some it may seem that moral rights have become irrelevant in the digital age, where there is more distance than ever between the author and his work. Mira Rajan’s view is that the fact that moral rights have become more difficult to enforce in practice does not mean that they are no longer relevant. However, the book reveals that moral rights are fundamentally a cultural phenomenon, a concept which is enormously dependent on the social value attributed to the author of a work and which cannot easily be codified.

Moral Rights: Principles, Practice and New Technology is published by Oxford University Press, and runs a hefty $150.00

According to Enhanced News Online, three so-called street artists have sued Anschutz Entertainment Group (“AEG”) and the Ritz-Carlton Residences at L.A. Live, owned by AEG, for destroying $100,000 of their artwork. The artwork had been loaned to AEG and the Ritz-Carlton Residences for a high-end promotional event, but instead of being returned to the artists, the artwork was allegedly dismantled and discarded.

The lawsuit alleges, in part, a violation of the artists’ Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) and the California Art Preservation Act (CAPA).

Images of the destroyed artwork may be viewed here.

Answer:  You can’t copyright either one.

Ok folks, here are two examples of legal writing: a good one and a bad one.

For the first example (the good one), we have Donn Zaretsky’s article for The Art Newspaper, This Copyright Confusion Ought to End, hot off the press. Donn makes what to most would be a commonsensical observation: when wondering what the law states, read the text. Referencing two recent copyright-VARA cases, Philips v. Pembroke and Mass MoCA v. Christoph Büchel, Donn wonders what it is about the Visual Artists Rights Act that has layfolk and federal judges making erroneous interpretations.

[E]ach of these cases involves a departure from the plain language of the statute. The definition of “work” in the Copyright Act—and therefore Vara—clearly includes unfinished works. There is no distinction in the language of the statute between site-specific and non-site-specific works. There is a clear exception under the law for conservation. Art may be mysterious, but Vara is not. Stick to the text.

How can we not agree with Donn? Or George Conway’s similar argument in the Büchel case. Well, there’s always one, right?

Enter the bad example, a law review article by Elizabeth Bock of the University of Michigan Law School. Bock takes a play out of the “what would life be like on Neptune” playbook, otherwise known as the “public policy” argument, and attempts, in a well-worn and tired manner, to convince the reader that the Visual Artists Rights Act should say what she proposes rather than what it actually– and clearly– states. Her thesis:

This Note proposes instead that these [moral rights] statutory protections should vest when an artist determines that his work is complete and presents it to the public. This standard is more consistent with the history of moral rights. Additionally, public access is necessary to justify a treatment of art different from that of other types of property, and it is a more essential component of moral rights than an artist’s feelings of connection to his work. Finally, the legislative intent behind the Visual Artists Rights Act and the reasoning in previous judicial decisions are more accurately reflected by a public disclosure standard. Utilizing “creation” as a vesting point for moral rights is not supported by the history of the Visual Artists Rights Act and will result in uncertainty and inconsistency in future decisions.

So there you have it. What the statute should say, history, and legislative intent should guide our reading of the Visual Artists Rights Act.

You be the judge. Zaretsky’s here. Bock’s here. Play ball!

Law School for Visual Artists

October 5, 12, 19 and 26 and November 2, 2011
All classes 4pm to 6pm

VLA Auditorium: 1 East 53rd Street, 6th floor, NY

Free to visual artists

Legal issues can be overwhelming for many visual artists: relationships with galleries, appropriation practices, damaged artwork, art world employment practices, and collaborations with other artists are just some of the issues visual artists face.

With this in mind, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has initiated a course for contemporary visual artists that will make legalese comprehensible and manageable, while giving visual artists an introduction to legal issues necessary to protect themselves and their art projects. This 5-week lecture series is free to visual artists and will cover intellectual property (copyright and trademarks); contracts, consignment agreements, and licensing agreements; basic business models (non-profit and for-profit corporations, LLC’s); employment issues with studio and gallery assistants; artist websites; as well as issues in public art and commissioning agreements.

Participants who complete the entire 5-week series will also have access to one of two VLA legal clinics, where participants will meet with a pro bono attorney regarding any specific issues they may have regarding their work and projects. These clinics are also free to these participants.

The classes will be taught by Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, Esq., VLA’s Associate Director and artist.

This class series is open to visual artists only, and includes class materials.

For more information as well as registration requirements, please click here.

This image was originally posted to Flickr by Kent Wang.

Our good friend and law professor at Texas Wesleyan School of Law, Megan Carpenter, analyzes the intellectual property issues concerning art museums and their interactive, collaborative, and user-generated exhibitions. In particular, she asks whether these museum strategies run afoul of U.S. Copyright law as well as the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act, otherwise known as moral rights.

She focuses on a recent exhibition by the Dallas Museum of Art, where a sound installation played on speakers throughout the show and responded directly to the works on display. Artist Chapman Kelley publicly objected to the collaborative project, requesting that his work be removed from the exhibition and returned to him. Kelley claimed that the soundscape effectively used his existing work to create a new piece of art without his consent. The Museum refused.

From the SSRN site:

This article explores efforts by museums and galleries to enhance user experience (and increase attendance) using technology to create interactive and engaging exhibitions, and considers the copyright implications of this “participatory museum” movement. From the derivative rights provisions in the Copyright Act to the Visual Artists’ Rights Act, where do the artist’s rights stop and the museum’s obligations begin, and how is the public’s interest best served?

The law review article is was published in the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 13, No. 3, Spring 2011, and can be downloaded here.

The annual legal problems in museum administration conference was held last month. A few “hot” topics hit the agenda. Not surprisingly, copyright and fair use was in the mix. Other topics were federal resale rights, moral rights, and broken donor pledges. On the current “hot” topic concerning the academic and institutional use of copyrighted images, Theodore Feder, president of New York’s Artists Rights Society, had this to say.

[T]he society accepts “the use of thumbnails before, during and after an exhibition.” Under US “fair use” rules, which allows for the reproduction of copyrighted works in certain educational and other circumstances, “we accept as fair use a scholarly publication of under 3,000 copies [but] not a coffee table book,” plus reproductions used in research and news reporting[.]

The conference was organized by the American Law Institute-American Bar Association and sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the American Association of Museums. More via The Art Newspaper here.