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.
Dear Shane
Artlaw Services Ltd in voluntary liquidation. Can this be so? You cannot believe it. You do deserve a full explanation; Shane Simpson, LLB, Barrister Director Arts Law Centre of Australia Sydney Dear Shane, Artlaw Services Ltd in voluntary…
Back to The Future
It was 20 years ago today when Peter Townsend told me he was launching a new visual arts magazine, and invited me to contribute what he hoped might become a regular column dealing with current legal…
Exhibition Agreements
Most public galleries and many private ones put on exhibitions solely for the purpose of making the work of an artist or group of artists available for public view – selling is only incidental; these are usually ‘one…
Agency Deals
The lack of gallery premises or adequate showing space has not prevented many actual or would be dealers approaching artists offering agency deals, with a view to promoting and selling the artists' work and their reputations. In recent…
Follow up follow up follow up, ’till the fields ring again and again…
Droit de suite, or the legal right for artists to have a share in the profits made from the resale of their work, exists in the majority…
Stealing Ideas
Random House UK, publisher of The Da Vinci Code, is being sued, at the time of writing, in London’s High Court by two of three authors of a book (also published by Random House UK) from 1982, The Holy Blood and…
Conservation Renovation & Restoration
The three cases detailed in this article all raise the same question, one which has serious legal as well as professional practice implications for commissioners, owners, curators and conservators – as well as for living artists:…
VAT revisited
Since the Chancellor of the Exchequer doubled the VAT rate to fifteen percent, many artists, administrators and gallery proprietors have raised queries about the tax. Most problems have arisen through a lack of knowledge or from a misunderstanding…
Galleries and exhibitions
For a good overview of the gallery / artist relationship and what each party should expect, watch our ArtlawTV film, an interview with Rene Gimpel of Gimpel Fils. How do I get my gallery / dealer to…
Virtual Collections: National Portrait Gallery versus Wikipedia
The digital revolution’s radical transformation of information and communications technology has enabled public and private collections throughout the world to offer instant internet access to images of countless numbers of their artworks: virtual…
The Creative Act 2007
In April 1957 at the American Federation of Arts in Houston, Texas, Marcel Duchamp gave his now celebrated and all too brief talk ‘The Creative Act’: ‘Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of…
‘God help the Minister who meddles with Art’
Thus spoke the Liberal Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. I wonder if he’s turning in his grave? Now we have a Minister for the Arts with a voice in the Cabinet, perhaps the…
Commissions and the responsibilities they bring, part 1
You are an artist. A public body asks you to design an artwork for a public space or place. You are promised payment 'if it all works out'. You are flattered. How…
Beautiful Inside My Head Forever
‘The fine artist came to seem a near miraculous creator of value, transmuting relatively inexpensive materials into fabulously expensive commodities.’ Katy Siegel and Paul Mattick’s comment on the development of today’s art market place, in…
Private Views: Right Problem, Wrong Law
All too often artists and arts professionals look at a controversial image, conclude that the Law, specifically copyright law, must have something to say about it, must provide an answer. In the case of…
New Legal Rights
Parliament gives artists two new legal rights: to earn extra cash from their work; and to exert exclusive aesthetic control over it. ‘These rights are given to all artists for their lifetime and pass to their heirs…
What if I want to use an image of a celebrity in my work?
In the UK there are no specific celebrity protection laws, but it is illegal to place the image of any living person within a derogatory context…
‘One for you, nineteen for me’
George Harrison's pre decimalisation crie de coeur is everyone's concern, particularly at this time of the year and especially in the arts when organisations and individuals are busy making up and presenting, accounts and…