I’ll be teaching this 5-week course, Law School for Visual Artists, at Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, starting February 2, 2011. If you’re a visual artist, don’t miss it. Oh, it’s also free!

When: February 2, 9, 16, 23 and March 2, 2011.
Where: VLA, 1 East 53rd Street, NY, NY 10022 (Auditorium)
Registration Fee: Free to visual artists

Legal issues can be overwhelming for many visual artists: relationships with galleries, appropriation practices, damaged artwork, art world employment practices, and collaborations with other artists are just some of the issues visual artists face.

With this in mind, Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has initiated a course for contemporary visual artists that will make legalese comprehensible and manageable, while giving visual artists an introduction to legal issues necessary to protect themselves and their art projects. This 5-week lecture series will cover intellectual property (copyright and trademarks); contracts, consignment agreements, and licensing agreements; basic business models (non-profit and for-profit corporations, LLC’s); employment issues with studio and gallery assistants; artist websites; as well as issues in public art and commissioning agreements.

The classes will be taught by VLA’s Associate Director, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento

This class series is open to visual artists only, and includes class materials.

Class series will take place on the following Wednesdays: February 2, 9, 16, 23 and March 2, 2011

All classes will take place from 4pm – 6pm, and will be held at the VLA Auditorium (1 East 53rd Street, 6th floor, NY).

To register for this free lecture series, please e-mail the following information (your name, e-mail address, artistic medium (film, video, sculpture, painting, drawing, etc.), and years of professional practice) to Luis Nieto Dickens at lndickens@vlany.org before January 23, 2011.

Please note: Seating is limited, and thus unfortunately we cannot accommodate every registration. In order to be registered for this lecture series, registrants must attend all 5 classes. You will receive an e-mail confirming your registration on January 24, 2011. Please do not contact us regarding your pending registration.

This program generously sponsored by The AG Fund and The Matisse Foundation.

A Swedish court has convicted three men of stealing a valuable painting by Edvard Munch from a museum that didn’t realize it was missing. Via The Seattle Times.

I was just reading Marie Darrieussecq‘s Dispatch (sorry, no link) in the recent Art Review Journal–concerning the “censorship” of Larry Clark’s recent exhibition in Paris–and it reminded me of the recent skirmishes in the U.S. with restrictions on the exhibition and experiencing of artworks. There is of course the recent National Portrait Gallery fiasco over their removal of David Wojnarowicz’s video; Jeffrey Deitch’s change of mind and paint-over at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA); and Ingrid Homberg’s violent ousting from the Gagosian Gallery, NY.

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A Manhattan judge has ruled that copyright law doesn’t apply, and granted an upstate memorabilia dealer approval to sell one of Holocaust hero Oskar Schindler’s lists of Jewish workers he saved from being sent to Nazi concentration camps.

Via The NY Post.

New York police are investigating the theft of major artworks, including a Warhol and Lichtenstein, from a posh Manhattan apartment. The art collection is estimated at $750,000.

Via CBC News.

Charles Gute. Copyright 2010 Charles Gute. All rights reserved.

Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts has just announced its 2011 Art & Law Residency Program residents.

The eight visual artists, four writers, and curatorial assistant will meet for semi-monthly Seminars directed at the theoretical and critical examination of current art and law issues. During the course of the Program, artists and writers will develop new projects and papers and receive support from Faculty on a regular basis to discuss and address the aesthetic, practical, philosophical, legal and judicial aspects of their work. The Residency takes place in New York City, and will culminate in a public Exhibition at the Maccarone Gallery and a Symposium where the participants will exhibit their projects and present papers. Seminar leaders include

The Residents are:

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The artist, AA Bronson, asked the National Portrait Gallery last week that it remove his photograph, Felix, June 5, 1994, which shows the corpse of Mr. Bronson’s partner shortly after he died of AIDS, from the NPG show, Hide/Seek, to protest the removal of David Wojnarowicz’s video.

To this day the National Portrait Gallery has not complied. According to Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes, Bronson sent the NPG a brief but to-the-point e-mail insisting that if his art work was not withdrawn as he requested, the NPG would be in jeopardy of violating Bronson’s moral rights,

My lawyer suggests that, according to my moral rights under copyright law in both Canada and the USA, I have the right to withdraw my work from Hide/Seek. Please remove my work from the exhibition immediately.

We’re not sure about the Canadian moral rights law, but it does not seem to us that under the 1990 Visual Artists Rights Act the NPG would be violating Bronson’s moral rights simply by exhibiting the work within a context and/or exhibition that Bronson did not like or approve of. If this were the case, artists could dictate and–ironically–censor the speech of individuals whom they did not identify with ideologically. Interesting move though.

UPDATE:  Donn agrees!