On 29 May 2025 Cambridge University Press published the sixth edition of Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts (LEVA), a foundational text in the field of art and law first published in 1979. At that time, this niche cultural legal practice was in its infancy, and Art Monthly contributed to its development via this column in its inaugural publication of October 1976 (AM 1).
Five decades ago, the visual arts ecosystem was not the interrelated and interdependent global network it is today. Rather it was a loose network of national cultural organisations and marketplaces that connected with others from time to time. Since the mid 1970s, the handful of publications on art law, or aspects of art law, have tended to focus on national – not international – laws, and offer few insights into the operations of the global art world. Yet there was a notable pioneer of international art law: the late John Henry Merryman, a US-based legal scholar now remembered as one of the most influential academics in the field of artists’ rights and cultural property.
In 1971 Merryman was appointed Professor of Law at California’s Stanford Law School, and began delivering a lecture series on art and the law, which he developed to form the basis of the first edition of LEVA. Four more editions were published until 2007, each one becoming less US law-oriented and increasingly international in scope as the art ecosystem became global. Merryman died in 2015, and LEVA’s long-awaited sixth edition has been reorganised and updated by art lawyer and art historian Stephen K Urice, professor of law at the University of Miami School of Law, and Simon J Frankel, a judge on the Superior Court of California in San Francisco who also teaches Art and the Law at Stanford Law School.
LEVA’s sixth edition takes a fresh look at primary materials and commentary from previous editions, extending the book’s analysis with significant changes in format and content to reflect changes in the field. The book has multiple uses and audiences – a text for courses in law schools and graduate programmes, a reference work for lawyers and museum professionals – and is peppered with engaging legal stories and colourful anecdotes featuring a broad cast of characters in the global art world. Complementing their own observations, the authors include excerpts from judicial opinions, scholarly and popular articles, international treaties, and statute law. There is examination of an abundance of legal and ethical issues impacting artists, collectors, dealers, and museums in today’s global art ecosystem.
Principal sections include: The Artist and the Art Market; Artists’ Rights in the Works They Create; The Art Collector and the Art Market; Title and Authenticity; Taxes, Death, Divorce – and Art; Art and Armed Conflict; Antiquities and the Trade in Cultural Property; Museums; Art, Freedom of Expression, and the Government. Two key challenges were faced by Merryman during a half century of the art world’s global development, which confront all art lawyers today: the marked absence of international regulation, and in consequence the need for ethical self-discipline.
International trade and industry grew during the 20th century, especially after the Second World War, and led to the development of industry-governed and funded regulatory frameworks that typically include common standards of trading, transparency of transactions, and dispute resolution mechanisms, which were in turn buttressed by national laws and international agreements, treaties and conventions. In these ways, regulatory frameworks were established for international industries such as: banking, fishing, pharmaceuticals, shipping, sports, transportation and so on. No similar regulatory frameworks were developed by or for the international art industry, which is why that art market is often been described as being like the Old Wild West: a self-built society without law enforcement, just the survival of the fittest – the ‘elephant in the room’ being lack of transparency and regulatory oversight compared with other global industries.
Are there truly no international art ecosystem laws? Most countries have a general legal framework governing business activity, yet few have laws specifically governing art enterprises, which are invariably required to comply only with general business laws such as: evidence of transactions, collection of sales tax from a purchaser (sometimes with special provisions for agents selling art on consignment), consumer protection rights to return goods/art bought online, offsetting necessary business expenditure against sales income to produce taxable profits.
An exceptional art-specific law operates only in the European Economic Area, the UK, and around 40 countries beyond: artist’s resale right (droit de suite), which stipulates that art-market traders must collect on top of the purchase price a small percentage that is then paid to national artists’ collecting societies. Separately, copyright laws operate with common standards throughout most of the world via international treaties, which give protection to individual artworks against economic exploitation, but which do not regulate all global art activities.
This absence of comprehensive regulation was addressed from the outset by Merryman, who explored the unconstrained and freewheeling behaviour of people and entities operating in the art world, leading him to introduce ethical considerations into LEVA accordingly. Ethical issues arise when there is freedom of choice: choosing to transgress or observe the law is an ethical issue with legal implications; absolute legal rights and wrongs demand clear ethical choices; laws are invariably relativist, not absolute; relativist laws are framed to consider whether the nature of acts or omissions, and the mindset of those held responsible, render them liable; and mindset may be intentional or reckless or careless or blameless. For example: if an artwork is made by a process that transgresses the law, the creator may be liable if that process is absolutely proscribed by law and carried out with the prescribed legal mindset; if an artwork is exposed to viewing that transgresses the law, the exhibitor may be liable if that exposition is absolutely proscribed by law and carried out with the prescribed legal mindset.
Merryman’s initial and enduring interest in law and ethics in the visual arts was doubtless stimulated by his 60-year marriage to an art dealer. Other pioneers were similarly attracted into this ‘wild frontier’ through personal association with individuals and entities involved in the art world who sought advice and assistance to address their legal and ethical concerns. Today’s aspiring art lawyers can benefit from the works of such pioneers, including especially this new edition of LEVA.
© Henry Lydiate 2025