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.
Endangered Public Sculptures
Several currently running cases concern the legal status and protection of sculpture in the public environment. In November 2012 the London Borough of Tower Hamlets made a policy decision to sell Henry Moore’s sculpture, Draped Seated Woman,…
Claiming money owed to you through the Courts
If you are owed a small amount of money you have two choices, you must either persuade who owes you money to do so amicably, or you must take court action. As…
Commissioning Contemporary Art
There is a real shortage of published material that authoritatively and comprehensively covers the complex and extensive challenges of commissioning new artworks: conceptual, cultural, ethical, managerial, financial and legal. A new book, Commissioning Contemporary Art: a handbook…
Catch-22 Inheritance Tax
The absolute certainty of death and taxes poses an unavoidable estate planning question for owners of artworks: how will they be valued for inheritance tax purposes? A recent valuation dispute between the US Government’s Inland Revenue Service…
Gallery of Lost Art
Summer 2012 in the UK was notable for the opening of two unique exhibitions with closely related themes: invisible art and lost art. On 12 June London’s Hayward Gallery opened ‘Invisible: Art About the Unseen 1957…
Authenticity Certificates Value
What is the essence of a Sol LeWitt wall drawing? What makes these works – which famously exist as a series of instructions, executable by anyone who owns them – authentic LeWitts and not just some lines…
If I use a pseudonym can I sign documents and contracts with a gallery under my legal name?
Historically there have been many artists who have signed their works without using their full legal name, or any part of it,…
Authentication Revisited
Authenticity certificates were explored in last month’s column (Art Monthly 355). This month we revisit the subject in the light of further authentication disputes and debates. Art Fairs have vastly increased in number over the past ten years…
Authenticity Certificates
Public and private collectors and art market professionals have started to request certificates of authenticity to accompany the transfer of ownership of works. What are they, how are they used, who provides them and what is their legal…
Artwork Liabilities
The marked deterioration of Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, 1991 – the tiger shark in a vitrine of formaldehyde – was the subject of a prescient article by contemporary art…
Change of Art
On 18 October 2011, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a programme, Change of Art, exploring ideas to ‘rotate or retire’ public artworks that have become ‘tired, decrepit or meaningless’, in the course of which legal and practical questions…
Will I be able to exhibit and sell photos of my performance if I haven’t taken the pictures myself?
The photographer will automatically become the owner of the copyright and moral rights of the photographs (which empower the photographer to…
Editions or Series: Picking Up The Pieces
A century ago Marcel Duchamp toyed with the idea of creating a box to hold notes and sketches for his works which eventually resulted in The Green Box, 1934, containing notes for the…
What is Sculpture?
On 27 July 2011 the UK Supreme Court (UKSC) handed down a landmark judgment that decided the legal meaning of sculpture in UK copyright law. The significance of this decision is far reaching, because UK law operates…
Is my work protected by copyright or design rights?
This is a question that is not always easy to answer as there is a significant overlap between the two. Own It have written a downloadable pdf that attempts to reply to…
Sotheby’s and Christie’s
The new year ushered in several important judicial decisions dealing with artlaw matters, including the Bacon Estate; the Sotheby’s and Christie’s so called ‘price fixing’ case; payments to artists of royalty fees by UK Universities; and Gilbert…
The Bacon Estate (1)
The new year ushered in several important judicial decisions dealing with artlaw matters, including the Bacon Estate; the Sotheby’s and Christie’s so called ‘price fixing’ case; payments to artists of royalty fees by UK Universities; and…
Performance Art and The Law
The resurgence of performance related artistic practices over the past decade raises complex aesthetic, legal and, at times, ethical questions regarding the protection, authorship and ownership of the ‘works’ generated through these artistic practices. The…