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.
Ownership
When is a ‘work’ completed? Is it when the artist releases it for public viewing, and/or only if released for sale? What is the status of a work an artist (or a deceased artist’s estate) disowns after its release?…
Authentication
Works by African American artists have recently been achieving unprecedented interest in both museum and art market worlds, possibly stimulated by the critical success of Tate Modern’s 2017 show ‘Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black…
Love & Money
There has been an unprecedented amount of media coverage of Banksy’s Girl with Balloon (2006) shredding incident since it took place at Sotheby’s London’s evening sale of contemporary art on 5 October 2018. But none of this…
Reputation: Art & Artists
Last month’s column explored the fragility of the public reputation of art business professionals in the digital age, highlighting how traditional laws of defamation are invariably unfit for the purposes of deterring or preventing social media…
Reputation
‘It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.’ As legendary business magnate Warren Buffet says, reputation is hard won yet fragile. His remark responds to…
Fair Deals
Cultural tourism is a rapidly growing sector of the broader tourism market and has become a thriving worldwide business. A key component of this expanding trade is art tourism that has significantly contributed to the globalisation of the…
Conservation Questions
Ethical practices of art conservation have become a renewed subject of debate following publication of a pre conservation image of Salvator Mundi, c1500, which was recently attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and subsequently sold for $450m at auction…
Digital Drivers
Sales of contemporary art have increased exponentially since the global economic downturn around 2009. Recent professional art market research shows that post war and contemporary art sales account for roughly half the global spend on all types of…
The ICOM Code
A new series of professional development courses aimed at mid career curators and museum professionals was recently launched by Whitechapel Gallery in partnership with the Art Fund. Under the portfolio title Inside the Gallery: How To, each…
When Collaborators Turn
Marina Abramović is being sued for breach of contract by her former artistic collaborator Ulay over works they jointly created when working and living together in Amsterdam for a dozen years: Relation Works, 1976 1988. This lawsuit…
Moral Lights
Appropriation – without a capital ‘a’ – of images by artists has been common practice throughout art history. Artists whose images are appropriated can and do use national and international copyright laws to take legal action against unlawful…
Film and Video
The Whitechapel Gallery’s current survey show ‘Electronic Superhighway 2016 1966’, is a reflection of the extent to which digital media are now being used by increasing numbers of visual artists, especially as the costs of equipment have…
Conservation
Deterioration and degradation of contemporary art increasingly concerns specialists in the field of conservation and restoration. Such experts are being asked for advice and assistance from key actors – including artists – in the art ecosystem, about work made…
Taking Care of Business
Damien Hirst’s autobiography will be published by Viking Penguin in Autumn 2015. When recently announcing the deal, the publishers promised that Hirst will ‘lay bare the modern art world’. The book will be co written with…
Suing Art Experts
Last month’s consideration of art after death suggested that artists might adopt straightforward and sensible practices to authenticate and inventorise their works, to avoid difficulty and complication after death as well as during their lifetimes. This month…
Material Ephemerality
Works made from short life materials used by modern and contemporary artists increasingly pose problems and challenges for those who handle or possess works: collectors, estates and foundations, conservators and restorers, curators and consignees, storers and transporters; and…
Why are Artists Poor?
Borrowing the title of Hans Abbing’s important sociological interrogation of contemporary art practice from 2007, let us consider a case in point. A young unknown artist relocated 30 odd kilometres north of his hometown to a…
Who Owns Street Art
A Banksy style rat holding a sign asking ‘Why?’ was recently stencilled on the wall outside a London shop from which the Banksy attributed mural Slave Labour had been hacked away a few weeks earlier. This…