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.
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…
Terms and Conditions
The social network revolution of the past two decades of digital and technological innovation and exponential growth has been embraced by artists to transform their communications with each other and their viewing audiences. But few of us…
Art? Pension? Trust?
Summer time is the silly season when most journalists and politicians take long vacations and news media are filled with stories that are trivial or nonsensical. During the past few months an art news story has emerged…
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…
As a self-employed artist, will the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) affect me?
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), effective from 25th May 2018, is a hot topic amongst businesses at present, and this FAQ offers key points about if and how…
Fair Image Use Fees
Just as the industrial revolution radically transformed the world during the 18th and 19th centuries, the digital revolution is affecting most areas of life in the 21st century. Keeping pace with the exponential growth and global…
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…
Idea/Expression Dichotomy
This year marks the centenary of the creation of a work widely accepted as the most influential of the 20th century: Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 1917. This readymade and its reception heralded the transformation of modern and contemporary art…
Wash-Out
A week is a long time in politics: rapid and unforeseeable changes can transform the political and economic landscape. During one week in April 2017, UK politicians made significant changes affecting the financial prospects of the UK’s public facing…
A Landmark Case?
Can the integrity of publicly sited sculpture be damaged by siting another object close to it? Think of landmark works such as Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North, 1988, or Andy Scott’s Kelpies, 2013: would their integrity…
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…
Secondary Sales Risks
Caveat emptor is usually translated as ‘let the buyer beware’. Its common use in law and business connotes a doctrine that still operates today, especially in the increasingly lucrative market for secondary sales of contemporary art: caveat…
Continuing Silence
Many aspects of the art business world attract criticism or attack for being slippery and opaque, none more so than in the realm of sales transactions where privacy and discretion are paramount. First sales of artwork directly by…
Artists’ Estate Management
During their early careers, planning for posterity is a low priority for most artists. But as careers develop, especially if market and/or critical successes are achieved, what should happen to works after death becomes an increasingly important…
Dealing Differently
In 1976 this column looked at the case of a London based artist who sent work to a New York gallery for exhibition and sale in the US: the works were sold and the gallery sent the artist…
The Artist’s Estate
A tale of an ill drawn Will and 798 paintings was told in this column 40 years ago following a New York State court’s 1975 decision in favour of Mark Rothko’s children, who had contested their father’s…