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.
Licensing
Licensing can be a useful way to earn extra income by permitting other uses of your work in exchange for money What is licensing? When you license your work, you are giving permission to someone else to use your…
Travellers Tales
The international nature of art activity involves many artists and administrators visiting foreign countries, particularly during the summer. Autumn heralds the start of the academic year in art schools and sees art students and lecturers returning, often from…
Fundamental Enquiries
A fundamental problem artists continually bring to Artlaw is the need for basic information and advice on how to set up and maintain a ‘business’ as an artist; it’s a question of survival. It has been the aim…
Posthumous Artworks
Blinky Palermo’s reputation was given a major boost through retrospective exhibitions in Barcelona and at London’s Serpentine Gallery in 2003. This, in turn, has led to funding recently being achieved by Edinburgh College of Art to ‘rescue’ one…
Charitable incorporated organisation
A Charitable Incorporated Organisation, or CIO, is a new legal form for a charity, brought in by the 2011 Charities Act. A CIO: is an incorporated form of charity which is not a company only has to…
Management Of Creativity 30 Years On
In October 1976 the first issue of Art Monthly carried the first Artlaw column. Have things improved, worsened, or stayed pretty much the same over the last 30 years? From Jennie Lee’s appointment as…
Money
Income Tax and the achievement and maintenance of self employment or ‘freelance’ status is a recurring theme of these pieces; as is the link between freelance working and claiming welfare benefits (although the names of those benefits have changed…
Strategies for the Arts
The UK’s general election on May 5 smartly follows the ‘electorate friendly’ annual budget statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in March 2005. What will the election manifestos of the UK’s main political parties…
When I Paint my Masterpiece
Dear Henry, Recently I was amazed to see a portrait I had painted reproduced photographically on a poster in the city where I live. I managed to acquire a copy of the poster and saw…
Collective Bargaining
Last month's column focused on the selling power of those few artists whose works have established a strong market value, and their ability to pick and choose – or blacklist – their purchasers or dealers. To redress the…
What is copyright infringement?
Copyright infringement takes place where there is copying of all or a substantial part of an image – unless a ‘fair dealing’ or ‘substantial part’ exception applies, or unless it is only the ideas or concepts that…
Conservation, Restoration and Replication of Modern Sculpture
Tate Modern will host a colloquium, Inherent Vice: the replica and its implications in Modern Sculpture, this month. With the support of by The Andrew W Mellon Foundation, 40 specialists from a range…
Copyright and Moral rights: New legislation (introduction)
On October 30 1987, the Government introduced into the House of Lords the long overdue measure to reform the law of copyright and other intellectual property: The Copyright, Designs and Patents Bill'. It…
Working as an artist: part II
On the evening of October 4 1979, in London, Eduardo Paolozzi (EP), his assistant Marlee Robinson (MR), John Hoyland (JH) and Brian Clarke (BC) met and recorded a discussion with lawyer Henry Lydiate (HL)…
Selling is Easy
Selling work is easy: give it to the buyer and take the money. However, many artists and buyers care about what might happen to the work in the future: buyers are often concerned about originality, size of edition…
The Tax Man Cometh
Reading last month’s Page Two (Art Monthly No.74) contribution by Jennifer Oille, reporting the apparently unfair and inequitable treatment of artists under Canadian tax laws, stimulated some comparison with our own regime; sharing these thoughts might…
Community benefit society
Community benefit societies (BenComs) are incorporated industrial and provident societies (IPS) that conduct business for the benefit of their community. Profits are not distributed among members, or external shareholders, but are instead returned to the community. It…
Copyright and Moral rights: New legislation (part 3)
What remedies are available for Copyright Infringements? Last month’s column continued our three part examination of the new Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, shortly coming into force (the precise date will…