It appears that a Philadelphia mural, dedicated to African-American artist Dox Thrash, was destroyed over the Thanksgiving weekend.

The Art Blog reports that the culprits have not been identified, but that the destruction appears to be intentional. According to the Mural Arts Program website, the mural was installed in 2001 by artists Eric Okdeh and Cavin Jones. The mural honors the work and life of African-American printmaker Dox Thrash, who invented the carbodundum mezzotint printmaking process.

Pennsylvania does have moral rights legislation, and unless there are facts to the contrary, the mural would also garner protection under the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act. Aside from the fact that this senseless and egregious act runs contrary to any artistic sensibility, one would not be too rash in considering criminal charges against the vandals.

Thanks to our friend, Rob Sanchez, for the heads up on this one.

Artinfo has the story.

The L.A. City Council last December passed a new ordinance that effectively banned anyone but local artists from engaging in commercial activity on the boardwalk’s beach-facing side. Ordinance violators are subject to fines and repeat offenders can end up in jail.

That has left it to officers like Sgt. Gonzalez to routinely weigh in on a debate more suited to the Museum of Modern Art or the Guggenheim: What constitutes art?

Via The WSJ.

The play Amy, which was scheduled to open on 30 January in a 220-seat theatre in central Copenhagen, was based on interviews, concerts, Winehouse’s letters and newspaper articles. Denmark’s Royal Theatre had earlier been granted a permit to perform the play by the Danish copyright agency Koda….”We were told by her father and the lawyers around him that we can forget all about the rights for the music, the photos, branding and everything.”

Via The Independent.

Collectors, artists and lawyers, in last Saturday’s The Economist, outlines how the increasing problem of authentication lawsuits is hurting the art market. But is it really? Maybe with modernist and pre-modernist works, because recent auction results for contemporary art show otherwise.

Via The Economist:

The fear of lawsuits makes experts whisper and dodge. For instance, the catalogue raisonné of Isamu Noguchi, a Japanese-American sculptor, won’t be a real catalogue raisonné, says the project’s manager, Shaina Larrivee. To reduce liability, she says, it will be published as an online-only, ever-modifiable work-in-progress. It’s harder to sue “a constantly moving target”, as another expert puts it. Ms Larrivee says that the foundation will keep quiet if it sees an apparently fake Noguchi on sale.

I wrote earlier this month about an exhibition currently up at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia University. Slate Magazine just published a generous critique of the exhibition and premise. John Reed comments on his initial experience:

When we arrived (a friend went up to the show with me), Javier, who was at the front desk, promptly informed us that we could do what we wanted—touch the works, photograph them, roll them around, pick them up, turn them over, whatever. This was a not-exhibition of not-art, and as not-gallery-goers, we were free to behave as advanced primates.

Here’s a great website on Copyright, Museums, and Licensing of Art Images. It lists a number of scholarly articles on this topic, the most recent being “Museum Policies and Art Images: Conflicting Objectives and Copyright Overreaching,” published in the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal.