Art and culture law

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Art and culture law refers to legal aspects of the visual arts, antiquities, cultural heritage, and the art market and encompasses the safeguarding, regulation, and facilitation of artistic creation, utilization, and promotion. [1] Practitioners of art law navigate various legal areas, including intellectual property, contract, constitutional, tort, tax, commercial, immigration law, estates and wills, cultural property law, and international law to protect the interests of their clients. [1]

Contents

While the term "art" can encompass a wide range of creative forms, art law typically concentrates on the realm of fine art or visual arts. [1]

Key terms

History

Art law has evolved significantly over the course of the 20th century, with its influence evident in municipal, state, and federal courts. In the United States, although the intersection of art and law is rooted in the U.S. Constitution and the Copyright Clause, which encourages "the progress of science and useful arts" by securing exclusive rights for authors and inventors, little headway was made in the realm of art law until William Howard Taft, convinced Congress to establish the National Commission of Fine Arts. [3]

Following World War II, there was a notable cultural boom, shifting the focal point of the art market from Europe to the United States. This change brought increased attention to American culture, and the American artist was no longer an outsider. Instead, they entered a new era, becoming integrated into the business environment. This newfound prominence highlighted the necessity for legal professionals with a specific focus on matters related to the arts.

Some of the leading art attorneys who have made a deep mark on the field include Judith Bresler, Norman Palmer, and John Henry Merryman.

See:

Importance

Art law is important because it provides the ability to protect the rights of artists, collectors, galleries, and museums. Art law does not only protect individuals but it promotes the creation, preservation, and distribution of art. [4]

Areas of art and culture law

Important art law cases

Cultural heritage cases

Theories

John Henry Merryman is a pioneer of cultural and artistic property law academia. He has drawn distinctions between two paradigms through which art and cultural law can be defined. The first is the subject being independent of its national ties and attracting significance and meaning from the historical or archaeological interest that is generated by human culture. [9] This is idea is legally bolstered by the UNESCO definition of cultural objects which is a close definition of significant objects which attract interest. [10] The second inextricably ties cultural objects to their national heritage which in turn legitimises efforts for their re-patriation (see Elgin marbles, Gweagal shield, Easter island).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fair use</span> Concept in United States copyright law

Fair use is a doctrine in United States law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without having to first acquire permission from the copyright holder. Fair use is one of the limitations to copyright intended to balance the interests of copyright holders with the public interest in the wider distribution and use of creative works by allowing as a defense to copyright infringement claims certain limited uses that might otherwise be considered infringement. The U.S. "fair use doctrine" is generally broader than the "fair dealing" rights known in most countries that inherited English Common Law. The fair use right is a general exception that applies to all different kinds of uses with all types of works. In the U.S., fair use right/exception is based on a flexible proportionality test that examines the purpose of the use, the amount used, and the impact on the market of the original work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moral rights</span> Copyrights related to attribution, anonymity, and integrity of the work

Moral rights are rights of creators of copyrighted works generally recognized in civil law jurisdictions and, to a lesser extent, in some common law jurisdictions.

The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 (VARA),, is a United States law granting certain rights to artists.

A copyright is the legal protection extended to the owner of the rights in an original work. Original work refers to every production in the literary, scientific, and artistic domains. The Intellectual Property Office (IPOPHL) is the leading agency responsible for handling the registration and conflict resolution of intellectual property rights and to enforce the copyright laws. IPOPHL was created by virtue of Republic Act No. 8293 or the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines which took effect on January 1, 1998, under the presidency of Fidel V. Ramos.

<i>Rogers v. Koons</i> American copyright law case

Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301, is a leading U.S. court case on copyright, dealing with the fair use defense for parody. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that an artist copying a photograph could be liable for infringement when there was no clear need to imitate the photograph for parody.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legal issues with fan fiction</span>

Fanfiction has encountered problems with intellectual property law due to usage of copyrighted characters without the original creator or copyright owner's consent.

In United States copyright law, transformative use or transformation is a type of fair use that builds on a copyrighted work in a different manner or for a different purpose from the original, and thus does not infringe its holder's copyright. Transformation is an important issue in deciding whether a use meets the first factor of the fair-use test, and is generally critical for determining whether a use is in fact fair, although no one factor is dispositive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Freedom of panorama</span> Permissive provision in copyright laws

Freedom of panorama (FOP) is a provision in the copyright laws of various jurisdictions that permits taking photographs and video footage and creating other images of buildings and sometimes sculptures and other art works which are permanently located in a public place, without infringing on any copyright that may otherwise subsist in such works, and the publishing of such images. Panorama freedom statutes or case law limit the right of the copyright owner to take action for breach of copyright against the creators and distributors of such images. It is an exception to the normal rule that the copyright owner has the exclusive right to authorize the creation and distribution of derivative works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of intellectual property</span> Overview of and topical guide to intellectual property

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to intellectual property:

In art, appropriation is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the history of the arts. In the visual arts, "to appropriate" means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects of human-made visual culture. Notable in this respect are the readymades of Marcel Duchamp.

The copyright law of Australia defines the legally enforceable rights of creators of creative and artistic works under Australian law. The scope of copyright in Australia is defined in the Copyright Act 1968, which applies the national law throughout Australia. Designs may be covered by the Copyright Act as well as by the Design Act. Since 2007, performers have moral rights in recordings of their work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derivative work</span> Concept in copyright law

In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of a first, previously created original work. The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent from the first. The transformation, modification or adaptation of the work must be substantial and bear its author's personality sufficiently to be original and thus protected by copyright. Translations, cinematic adaptations and musical arrangements are common types of derivative works.

The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time and generally expire 70 years after the author's death or 95 years after publication. In the United States, works published before January 1, 1929, are in the public domain.

<i>Banality</i> (sculpture series) Sculpture series by Jeff Koons

Banality is a series of sculptures by American artist Jeff Koons. The works were unveiled in 1988 and have become controversial for their use of copyrighted images. Several editions of the sculptures have sold at auction for millions of dollars.

<i>Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley, Ltd.</i> 2006 American copyright law case

Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley, Ltd., 448 F.3d 605, is a 2006 case of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit regarding fair use of images in a pictorial history text. It affirmed the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which held at trial that the publisher's use of several images of past Grateful Dead concert posters and tickets, reduced considerably, in a timeline of the band's history was a sufficiently transformative use.

<i>Cariou v. Prince</i> 2013 copyright case in the United States

Cariou v. Prince, 714 F.3d 694 is a copyright case of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, on the question of whether artist Richard Prince's appropriation art treatment of Patrick Cariou's photographs was copyright infringement or fair use. The Second Circuit held in 2013 that Prince's appropriation art could constitute fair use, and that a number of his works were transformative fair uses of Cariou's photographs. The Court remanded to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York for reconsideration of five of Prince's works. The Supreme Court denied Cariou's petition for a writ of certiorari, and the case settled in 2014.

<i>Molotov Man</i> Iconic photograph by Susan Meiselas

Molotov Man is the title by which a photograph taken by Susan Meiselas during the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution has come to be known. Famous in its Nicaraguan context as a symbol of the Sandinista revolution, it has been widely reproduced and remixed.

<i>Milpurrurru v Indofurn Pty Ltd</i> Australian court case

Milpurrurru v Indofurn Pty Ltd was one of three Federal Court of Australia judgments in the 1990s involving the use of copyright law in Australia relating to Indigenous cultural and intellectual property (ICIP), the others being Yumbulul v Reserve Bank of Australia (1991) and Bulun Bulun v R & T Textiles (1998), or "T-shirts case".

Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith is a U.S. Supreme Court case dealing with transformative use, a component of fair use, under U.S. copyright law. At issue was the Prince Series created by Andy Warhol based on a photograph of the musician Prince by Lynn Goldsmith. It held Warhol's changes were insufficiently transformative to fall within fair use for commercial purposes, resolving an issue arising from a split between the Second and Ninth circuits among others.

<i>Blanch v. Koons</i> American copyright lawsuit

Blanch v. Koons, 467 F.3d 244, is a copyright case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2006. Fashion photographer Andrea Blanch sued appropriation artist Jeff Koons for copyright infringement after he used an image of a woman's lower legs taken from one of her photographs in a collage of his own. Koons claimed fair use, arguing he had transformed it sufficiently from its original purpose through his reuse. It is considered a significant case in addressing the latter issue.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Guha, Anne. "Guides: Art Law Research Guide: Introduction & Getting Started". guides.ll.georgetown.edu. Retrieved 2023-11-26.
  2. "What does it mean? A guide to key terms in art law, Boodle Hatfield (2023)" . Retrieved December 20, 2023.
  3. "Art Law". TheFreeDictionary.com. Retrieved 2023-11-26.
  4. 1 2 "Art Law: Everything You Need to Know". www.contractscounsel.com. Retrieved 2023-11-26.
  5. "Entertainment or Artist Visa | New York City Immigration Lawyer". www.shanescottlaw.com. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  6. "Estates, Wills, and Trusts | artbizlaw.com" . Retrieved 2023-11-26.
  7. "International art law". Berg & Moll International Lawyers. Retrieved 2023-12-20.
  8. "Art Law in The Supreme Court". Center for Art Law. 2020-12-29. Retrieved 2023-11-26.
  9. John Henry Merryman ‘Two Ways of Thinking About Cultural Property’ The American Journal of International Law Vol. 80, No. 4 (Oct., 1986), pp. 831-853 (23 pages) Cambridge Uni Press
  10. Article 1, The UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property of 1970.

Many organizations and libraries collect and catalogue art and cultural heritage publications.

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