Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento is an artist who practices art law. He is interested in the relationship between contemporary art and law, with a focus on copyright, free speech, deaccessioning, and nonprofit organizations.

He received his BA in Art from the University of Texas-El Paso, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. He was also a Van Lier Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art in 1997-98, and a Resident of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program in 2000. He received his J.D. from Cornell Law School in 2006, and is currently Associate Director for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in New York City, Adjunct Instructor of Clinical Law at Brooklyn Law School, and a mentor with the Kennedy Center’s Arts in Crisis program. He also founded the VLA Art & Law Residency Program, where he is currently the Program Director and faculty.

Sarmiento has taught in a number of universities and art schools, including Harvard University, the University of Southern California, UC-Irvine, Occidental College, and CalArts. He has presented talks and participated in panels and symposiums at a number of institutions, including the New York State Bar Association, the El Paso Museum of Art, The El Paso Bar Association and Federal Bar, New York University School of Law, McGill Faculty of Law, Dia:Beacon, Fordham Law School, The International Center of Photography, Pratt Institute, Harlem Arts Alliance, The Bronx Museum AIM Program, The Yale School of Management, The School of Visual Arts, The Vera List Center for Arts and Politics at The New School, Creative Capital, Columbia University School of the Arts, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Columbia Law School, Cornell Law School, Harvard University, and the Centre Sociologie de l’Innovation, Ecole des Mines de Paris. He is currently a New York State Council on the Arts panelist for state and local partnerships. For more information on institutions and journals where papers, projects, and talks on art and law have been presented, please view Clancco’s Bibliography page.

His art projects have been shown in international exhibitions, including Mexico, Germany, and Spain, and nationally in Dallas, New York City, and Los Angeles. He has published essays and projects in Five Continents and One City Exhibition (catalogue essay, Mexico), Capital Art: On the Culture of Punishment (catalogue essay, US), Cabinet Magazine (US), Law Text Culture (Australia), and Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left. For more information on art projects, please see our Projects page.

Email: sergio_sarmiento|at|clancco.com