Archive of Henry Lydiate‘s Artlaw column, published in Art Monthly since 1976. Have a legal question about your career? Check our Directory or send us a legal query.
On Freedom to Protest
On the morning of 14 October 2022 Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, 1888, was vandalised by two environmental protestors throwing the contents of two tomato soup cans over most of the painting exhibited in Room 43 at UK’s…
Don’t Delete Art
Given the understandable reliance by most of the world on digital technology for communications throughout the annus horribilis of 2020 (and its continuation into 2021, with no certain prospect of escape from Covid restrictions), social media platforms…
Freedom of Expression: part 2
In cases of both import and export, what is obscene is a matter for the customs officers, in the first place, and then for a jury to decide; it is not the same as the…
An Inspector Calls
A Metropolitan Police Inspector called upon the Saatchi Gallery in North London last month, ordered the removal of two artworks and a publication related to the exhibition ‘I am a Camera’, and threatened prosecution for failure to…
An Inspector May Call Again
Readers may recall our report and commentary (AM 245) on the Metropolitan Police Service’s threat to prosecute the photographer Tierney Gearon for showing allegedly indecent photographs of her children in the ‘I am a camera’…
Power Plays: Chimes of Freedom
The attempted censorship of the Power Plays exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery by Hull City Council in October raises issues of the greatest importance. An explanation of its legal facets will enable us to…
Displaying Student Work
Now that the annual round of degree shows is completed, one particular issue has been very prevalent this season and remains an unclear and often challenging area. Showing students’ artworks to the public can and sometimes does…
Freedom of Expression: part 1
Most totalitarian regimes have an Official Censor: we don’t. But there are still ways in which public authorities and private individuals and organisations are able to restrict freedom of expression. Striking for the guardians and…
Shelter from the storm
Not a word was spoke between us, There was little risk involved. Everything up to that point Had been left unresolved* Last minute cancellation of one off exhibitions on grounds of taste is not new. Sometimes…
Mapplethorpe
Much heat and hype has been generated by the media in recent months over the Hayward Gallery’s decision to self censor two works from the Mapplethorpe retrospective. The purpose of this piece is not to fuel any flames, but…
Morals, Mores & Minors
Lewis Carroll and Edgar Degas in the 19th Century, Balthazar Klossowski (Balthus) and Robert Mapplethorpe in the 20th Century, and Tierney Gearon and Annalies Strba at the beginning of this century, each produced artworks that were…
Art and the law on trial
Does the public need protecting against art and artists? Recent serious and real events in Parliament and the Courts have raised this apparently whimsical and abstract question to public notice. The law makers and…