Looks like another Visual Artists Rights Act lawsuit in the city that loves its murals.

Artist Victor Henderson, a cofounder of the group, alleges that the mural, known as the “Brooks Avenue Painting,” was improperly expunged last summer from its location using water blasting, according to papers filed this week in federal court.

The lawsuit argues that “Brooks Avenue Painting” could have been removed from the building “without substantial physical defacement, mutilation, alteration or destruction.”

And your concept of beauty?

Check out these videos and read more about the graff drones via Wired.

Image courtesy of Sergio Munoz Sarmiento. © 2014 Sergio Munoz Sarmiento. All rights reserved.

I’ll be on a panel, Law, Images, and Information, this coming Friday, April 25th at The CUNY Graduate Center, Center for Humanities, in New York City, regarding the legal and ethical issues posed by appropriation. Here’s the thesis:

What ethical issues arise when a public square becomes a public library, when a private life becomes a plotline, or an old song is sampled to create a new one? How are the potential legal implications of art-making considered and strategized for by artists and arts organizations? Join us as we explore the intersection of art and law on issues of civil rights, intellectual property, public space, and more. Panelists with diverse backgrounds in modern law and contemporary art will share their disparate perspectives in this conversation, which is part of our year-long Andrew W. Mellon Seminar on Images and Information.

Other presenters include Nate Harrison, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, Ruthann Robson, and Diala Shamas.

Prince, the musician, not the appropriationist, has just struck a landmark deal that will probably have a major influence on how other musicians and record labels settle the “new” copyright termination and reversion laws that kicked into effect in 2013.

According to Billboard,

As 2013 loomed, record label executives and artists managers said that they were unsure how copyright terminations and ownership reversions would play out as they expected a precedent-setting court case to decide whether the “work-for-hire” clause in standard recording contracts could successfully be challenged by artists. Works created under work-for-hire contracts are not eligible for copyright reversion. But privately some label executives have also said that in some instances the wiser course might be to negotiate the reversions and retain control of issuing artists’ catalog eligible for copyright terminations.

There’s still no way to tell how this law will impact visual artists, but it’s probably safe to say that it won’t affect them to the same extent as it will musicians.

Donn Zaretsky agrees. One of the judges even asked, “Aren’t there harmful effects to the state’s art market?” The art market. The Art Market!

Oh where, oh where are our little Marxists when we need them?

Saturday, April 19, 2014.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit
1 – 3pm
Admission: Free (Suggested $5 museum donation)

Who, or what, is Triple Candie? What does it do, and why does it exist? How can it curate art exhibitions without artists and their artworks, but rather with copies of an artist’s oeuvre? Do the two co-founders, Shelly Bancroft and Peter Nesbett, work under this non-conceptual art strategy called Triple Candie as a disguise, creating a protective veil? And if so, protection from whom, or from what? Ethical and legal conundrums, perhaps? Now comes Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, artist and arts lawyer. On April 19, Sarmiento will interrogate Triple Candie to inquire as to its curatorial exhibitions and art historical facilitations and obstructions in order to assess the legal, ethical, and moral repercussions of its performative practices.

RSVP here.

Please join me if you’re in town.