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Topics and questions:

Some questions about VARA:

• What is the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA)?
• What are the rights of "attribution" and "integrity" given to artists under VARA?
• What are artists' "moral rights"? What is the difference between "moral rights" and copyright?
• How do moral rights under VARA differ from European moral rights?
• What are VARA's limitations? What kinds of works are excluded?
• What kind of works are protected? Do rights under VARA expire?
• Can commission contracts limit protection under VARA?
• How can artists avoid waiving their rights when entering into contracts?
• How does VARA balance the rights of artists against the needs of patrons?
• What kinds of works qualify as having "recognized stature" under VARA?
• What recourse is available to artists who discover a VARA violation?
• If an artist disclaims attribution to a work that has been modified without authorization, can art historians attribute that work back to the artist in catalogues and studies? Does VARA present a conflict between free speech and the right to control attribution and preserve integrity?
• If an artist produces a parody of a VARA protected work, can the author of the original protected work enjoin the parody as detrimental to his reputation and to the integrity of the original work?
• How does moral rights legislation of the separate states support or conflict with VARA?
• What are the historical and philosophical bases for recognizing an artist's moral rights?
• How does VARA address our understanding of art as property?
• What kinds of cultural benefits accrue under VARA?

Artists' rights, or an act to encourage preservation of our nation's cultural patrimony:

The Visual Artists Rights Act ("VARA"), for the first time in federal law, recognized an artist's moral rights in his works of art. The Act was a compromise between many conflicting interests, and the result was immediately criticized from several quarters. The passage of VARA, however, marked a significant departure from prior property law. VARA grants artists two new rights, the right of attribution and the right of integrity. The right of attribution concerns the artist's right to claim authorship of a work created by him and to deny authorship of a work not his own. The right of integrity concerns the artist's right to prevent or to recover damages for the intentional distortion, mutilation, modification, or destruction of his work. The revolutionary aspect of VARA is that the artist retains these rights throughout his lifetime, even when the original work to be protected is no longer in his possession.

Unlike the European recognition of moral rights, which is centered on the artist's right to protect and exploit his creative output for his own honor or reputation, the policy bases of VARA are more complex. On the one hand, moral rights are personal to the artist. Fine art is unique among the arts in one important sense. A disproportionate percentage of the value of a work of fine art is in the physical object created, rather than the exploitation of derivatives or copies. Damage to the original object is prejudicial to an artist's ability to exploit the object for his enhanced honor and reputation, in a way that is not true for an author of a literary work or musical composition. VARA was an attempt to compensate visual artists for this imbalance in copyright law."

On the other hand, VARA recognizes a public interest in the encouragement of artists to work and in the preservation of their work once created. Appealing to the public interest on a narrow front helped ensure the passage of the legislation by invoking a higher social good than that of the individual gain of the artist or property holder. Public interest thus justified the intervention of federal law into what many considered a private contractual matter. By underpinning a copyright act with the public duty to preserve the nation's art and cultural patrimony, the Act also responded to a world-wide concern over issues of cultural protection and integrity.

Excerpted and adapted from Christopher J. Robinson, "The 'Recognized Stature' Standard in the Visual Artists Rights Act," Fordham Law Review, vol. 68, n. 5 (April 2000), pp. 1935-6

Quotes of interest:

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Biographies:

Robert Baron | Jeffrey Cunard | Patricia Failing | Harriet Senie | Athena Tacha | Christopher Robinson

ROBERT A. BARON

As recent past chair of the CAA Committee on Intellectual Property, Robert Baron has organized four NINCH Copyright Town Meetings held in conjunction with the annual meeting of CAA. In addition, he has contributed papers to Town Meetings held in Portland, Oregon; San Francisco (for the Visual Resources Association) and Baltimore (for a meeting of the American Association of Museums). He has written on intellectual property issues pertaining to the interests of art historians ("Digital Fever A Scholar's Copyright Dilemma," in Museum Management and Curatorship), and edited the volume "Copyright and Fair Use, The Great Image Debate" for Visual Resources where he serves on the editorial board. Robert also serves on the NINCH Copyright Town Meeting Planning Committee. With Jeffrey Cunard and Kathleen Cohen, he has drafted a CAA position paper on distance eduction for submission to the Copyright Office.

Robert Baron maintains a popular web-site dedicated to exploring the significance of the trend to parody and produce variants of the Mona Lisa, and has published on the topic of monalisiana. His latest article includes an extended review essay of three works -- the James Mayhew children's book Katie and the Mona Lisa, on firecracker labels and on the digital "photomosaic" portraits of Robert Silvers (Visual Resources 17,3).

In the past, Robert has taught art history, served as computer consultant and systems analyst to museums and, as project manager, helped guide the Academic Image Cooperative through its Prototype phase.

He is currently preparing a catalogue raisonné of the graphic works of the sixteenth-century graphic artist Barnard Salomon. Robert holds a B.A. from Harpur College, an M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, and, currently, is ABD from the IFA.

web-site: http://www.studiolo.org email:

JEFFREY P. CUNARD

Jeffrey P. Cunard practices in the area of U.S. and international telecommunications law and intellectual property law, including joint ventures, privatizations, regulatory advice and e-commerce transactions, and is an internationally recognized practitioner in the field of the Internet and cyberlaw. He is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Debevoise, which has its principal office in New York, European offices in Paris, London, Moscow and Frankfurt and an office in Hong Kong. Mr. Cunard also serves as counsel to the College Art Association and serves as advisor to its Committee on Intellectual Property.

Mr. Cunard speaks widely on and is the author of and a contributor to various articles on communications law and intellectual property. With his partner, Bruce Keller, he is the co-author of Copyright Law: A Practitioner's Guide (2001), published by Practicing Law Institute. He is the author of "Obscenity and Indecency," "Copyright" and "Trademark and Unfair Competition Issues," in Internet and Online Law (K. Stuckey, ed.) (Law Journal Seminars-Press 1999-2001), and of a comprehensive summary of legal developments involving the Internet, for the Practicing Law Institute's annual Communications Law program. He is a major contributor to The Future of Software (1995), published by MIT Press, is a co-author of two books on international communications law, From Telecommunications to Electronic Services (1986) and The Telecom Mosaic (1988), both published by Butterworths, and is on the Board of Editors of "e-commerce Law & Strategy" and "Cable TV and New Media Law & Finance" (for which he writes a monthly "FCC Watch" column). In 2001, with Mr. Keller, he taught a seminar at Harvard Law School, "Counseling the Internet Client: Practical Advice, Strategy and Litigation."

Mr. Cunard graduated summa cum laude in English and Political Science from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1977 and received a J.D. in 1980 from the Yale Law School, where he was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal. After graduation from law school, he clerked for U.S. District Judge Wm. Matthew Byrne, Jr., in Los Angeles, California.

Mr. Cunard can be reached by telephone in the Debevoise Washington, D.C. office at (202) 383-8043 and by e-mail at jpcunard@debevoise.com.

PATRICIA FAILING

Patricia Failing is a Professor of art history, Chair of the Division of Art History and Acting Director of the School of Art at the University of Washington, where she has regularly taught graduate seminars on legal and ethical issues in the visual arts. Her field of specialization is modern and contemporary art; her latest book is Howard Kottler: Face to Face (University of Washington Press, 1995). She is author of numerous articles on cultural property issues, ethical practices of art museums, and artists' rights, among them "Conflicts of Interest" [on current cultural property wars and the Presidents Cultural Property Advisory Committee], Art News, January 2001; "Following the Money" [on the Brooklyn Museums Sensation show], Art News, January 2000; "Art History and Copyright in the Digital Era," Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 1998.

E-mail address: failing@u.washington.edu

CHRISTOPHER J. ROBINSON

Christopher J. Robinson is an associate at the law firm of Debevoise and Plimpton in New York with a particular interest in intellectual property issues.

Mr. Robinson graduated in Modern History from Oriel College, Oxford University, in 1979. He completed five years of graduate study at the Courtauld Institute, University of London, in nineteenth and early twentieth century European painting and sculpture, with particular emphasis on the influence of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune on 1870s French painting. After moving to New York, Mr. Robinson worked as a dealer in old master and nineteenth century paintings and drawings with a number of established galleries, before starting his own dealership in old master drawings in 1993. In 1999 Mr. Robinson entered Fordham Law School where he became the Editor-in-Chief of the Fordham Law Review. He received his J.D in 2001.

Mr. Robinson is the author of several exhibition catalogues, including New York by Renoux, published by Editions Andre Roussard. He also published "Paul Baudry and the Paris Opera: The Artist as ‘Renovateur,’ The Art Journal, Spring 1987, and Note. ‘Recognized Stature’ in the Visual Artists Rights Act, 68 Fordham Law Review 1935 (April 2000). He has been an active member of the Private Art Dealers Association since 1997, and is a Fellow of the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Mr. Robinson can be reached by telephone at (212) 909 6733, or by e-mail at cjrobinson@debevoise.com.

HARRIET F. SENIE

Harriet Senie is director of museum studies and professor of art history at The City College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Prior to 1986 she was associate director of The Art Museum Princeton University and from 1979-82 gallery director at SUNY, Old Westbury. In the fall 2000 Prof. Senie was visiting distinguished professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

She is the author of Contemporary Public Sculpture: Tradition, Transformation, and Controversy (Oxford University Press, 1992), The `Tilted Arc’ Controversy: Dangerous Precedent? (University of Minnesota Press, 2001), and co-editor with Sally Webster of the anthology, Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context, and Controversy (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998) She has also published numerous articles pertaining to public art, memorials and memory, most significantly: "Mourning in Protest: Spontaneous Memorials and the Sacralization of Public Space," Harvard Design Magazine (Fall 1999); "Disturbances in the Fields of Mammon: Towards a History of Artists’ Billboards," in Laura Heon, ed. Art on the Road (MASS MoCA, 1999); "Perpetual Tension: Considering Richard Serra’s Jewish Identity," in Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd, eds. Complex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art (Rutgers University Press, 2001).

ATHENA TACHA

Born in Greece in 1936, Athena Tacha received an M.A. in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts, Athens; an M.A. in art history from Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio; and a Doctorate in aesthetics from the Sorbonne University in Paris. After her studies, she worked as Curator of Modern Art at the Allen Art Museum of Oberlin College, and published two books and various articles on Rodin, Brancusi and other 20th century sculptors. From 1973 to 2000, she was Professor of sculpture at Oberlin College. Since 1998, she has been Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and lives in Washington, DC.

One of the first artists to develop site-specific sculpture in the early 1970's, Tacha has won nearly fifty competitions for permanent public art commissions, of which over thirty have been executed throughout the U.S. -- from New York, Virginia and Florida to Ohio, Texas and Alaska -- including an entire city-block park in downtown Philadelphia. She has had five one-artist shows in New York -- at the Zabriskie Gallery, the Max Hutchinson Gallery, Franklin Furnace, and the Foundation for Hellenic Culture in 2001 -- and has exhibited in many group shows throughout the world (including the Venice Biennale). Concurrently, she developed a body of textual and photographic conceptual works, many of which are published as artist's books and are available at Printed Matter in New York.

In 1989, a retrospective of more than 100 of Athena Tacha's sculptures, drawings and conceptual photographic pieces was held at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. It included large color photographs of her executed commissions and was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, Athena Tacha: Public Works, 1970-88 (introductory essay by John and Catherine Howett). The same year, she had an exhibition of new work, over 50 sculptures and drawings, as well as two large site-specific installations, at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, also accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue (with an essay by Thalia Gouma-Peterson).

Four books have been devoted to Tacha's work: Athena Tacha: Public Sculpture (1982); Forms of Chaos: Drawings by Athena Tacha (1988); Cosmic Rhythms: Athena Tacha's Public Sculpture by Elizabeth McClelland (Ohio Artists Now, 1998), in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title at the Beck Center for Performing Arts in Cleveland; and most recently, Dancing in the Landscape: The Sculpture of Athena Tacha, with over 200 color reproductions (Ariel Press, Washington, DC, 2000). Several of her New York exhibitions have illustrated catalogues -- Massacre Memorials (Max Hutchinson, 1984), with an essay by Lucy Lippard, and Vulnerability: New Fashions (Franklin Furnace, 1994), a conceptual art piece critiquing the fashion industry. The most extensive articles on Tacha's art have appeared in Landscape Architecture (May 1978), Artforum (Jan. 1981), Sculpture (June 1987), Arts Magazine (Oct. 1988) and Sculpture (Nov. 2000).

Latest commission (2001): Pavement design and fountains (40,000 sq. ft.) for the South entrance plaza, American Airlines Center (new sports arena), Dallas, TX.

In progress: Two plazas and two walkways with pavement designs and sculptures for “Wisconsin Place”, a new development at the Friendship Heights Metro station, Bethesda, MD. A 700-foot long “art walk” between Grosvenor Metro station and the new Strathmore Concert Hall, Rockville, MD. A plaza for the new Washington Metro Morgan Station, Prince George County, MD.

at89@umail.umd.edu

http://www.oberlin.edu/~art/athena/tacha.html

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Participant Statements:

Jeffrey Cunard | Patricia Failing | Harriet Senie | Athena Tacha

JEFFREY P. CUNARD

I. VARA

VARA provides limited protection to artists for works of visual art in addition to the protection of copyright. (17 U.S.C. § 106A).

Significant as it recognizes on federal level the existence and importance of moral rights, whereby an artist retains some protectible interest in a work of art although he or she no longer owns it.

Aims: Encouragement to create and disseminate works of visual art by providing legal sanctions against damage or destruction of the work.

Two basic rights:

• Attribution. To claim a work of art as one’s own, and to disclaim the work of others or one’s own work which has been damaged or modified so as to a prejudicial to the artist’s honor or reputation.
• Integrity. To prevent or to recover damages for the intentional distortion, mutilation, or modification of a work that would be prejudicial to the artist’s honor or reputation; and to prevent or recover damages for the intentional or grossly negligent destruction of a work if it can be shown to be of recognized stature.

VARA has not been litigated very often: under 10 reported cases, most involving large scale sculptures or murals. For some artists, VARA has been a significant factor in providing artists with protection in contractual negotiation or in pre-litigation disputes.

-- Carter v. Helmsley Spear, Inc. (poor 1995 decision from influential circuit).

II. Key Issues in Litigating

General: Key terms narrow or left undefined.
Lack of case law

• Work of Visual Art. Key provision: Defined narrowly in statute. No audiovisual works, no multiples over 200 signed, numbered prints, no commercial works. No applied art. Ambiguous nature of works of craft.
• Work for Hire. Not covered.
• Cause of Action. Suit only by the artist whose work was damaged, modified, distorted, mutilated or destroyed (original thought was life plus 50 years). Not alienable.
• Honor and Reputation. Based on European concepts. Implicates respect for creative process and protection of future career.
• Recognized Stature. No frivolous suits. What is it? Need for expert testimony. Value to artist and to the wider community.
• Intentional/grossly negligent. Narrow; does not include ordinary negligent behavior, accident, etc.
• Waiver: Rights can be waived.
• Modification/destruction. Mural completely obstructed and unviewable not necessarily "destroyed" (English case).
• Building Exception:
  • Exempt from coverage: Works incorporated with permission of artist in building pre 1990 where works cannot be removed without causing their damage or destruction, or post 1990 waiver. (17 U.S.C. § 113).
  • Otherwise, if work can be removed without damaging or destroying the work, work can be removed if 1) diligent, good faith attempt, without success, to notify artist or 2) artist has been notified, but has not removed the work within 90 days at artist’s expense. (Can record works at Copyright Office.)
  • Removal is usually possible – e.g., murals removable even if painted directly onto outside brickwork of building. (Hanrahan case)
• Exceptions: Exceptions for
  • wear and tear (no duty to maintain or conserve);
  • no cause of action for modifications due to lighting, presentation, placement, conservation unless grossly negligent (to protect galleries and museums), leaving open status of site-specific works.

III. Practical Conclusions

• Waiver (e.g., waiver by one artist in jointly created work is binding on all contributors)
• Building Notice Provision is Limited. Make sure building owners/management have current address.
• File. Keep document file with all reactions to work for possible recognized stature purposes (Martin case).
• Remedies and Costs. Statutory damages are limited and costs may be high (e.g., expert testimony)
• Permission. Unsure status of work on buildings, vacant lots, etc. done without permission of owner (English case).
• Jurisdiction. VARA and state laws.
• Site-specificity. Unsure whether there is a cause of action for site-specific works under VARA if simply moved from site (Tilted Arc issue, side-stepped in Martin case due to contractual waiver).

PATRICIA FAILING

In 1960 the sculptor David Smith learned that a collector who owned one of his sculptures had "improved" the work by stripping the cadmium red paint from its surface. Unable to persuade the owner to restore the color, Smith disclaimed authorship of the work in angry letters to art magazines. Possibly we should start an action for protective laws, he suggested. For the past century artists enjoyed protection from such violations of their work in many European countries. European courts distinguished between an artist's pecuniary rights, such as copyright, and rights of personality, or moral rights, which give legal expression to the intimate bond assumed to exist between an artistic work and the artist's personality. From a European perspective, this bond justifies certain natural and inalienable rights for creators: to mistreat the work of art is to mistreat the artist, to impair his or her personality. Artists' moral rights had their major development in France, and included the artist's right to the continued physical integrity of his or her work after sale, the right to insist that his or her name be associated only with his or her work and the right to decide when, or whether, the work should be shown in public.

There were no equivalent legal rights for artists in the U.S. until 1979, when the state of California enacted the country's first artists' moral rights laws. New York followed with its own version of moral rights legislation in 1983. Nine other states passed some form of artists' moral rights laws prior to the enactment, in 1990, of a federal law -- the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). The federal law preempts state law where coverage overlaps, but many state laws have provisions for when there are no equivalents in the federal law. Artists in the U.S. need to be aware not only of VARA, but also must be alert to state laws that may affect the fate of their work.

HARRIET F. SENIE

VARA, Abstract Art, and Attorneys: Two issues raised by the legal aspects of the Tilted Arc controversy suggest serious problems with artists rights beyond the specifics of VARA. Art in general appears to enjoy less protection under the First Amendment than the written word and abstract art appears to be especially at risk. Perceived as having no content, it is inherently less protected than art with a recognizable subject. The other is a less specific, but broader concern. Attorneys practicing law based on precedent would seem to be at least initially negatively disposed towards recognizing the value of modern art that is inherently always new. As John J. Costonis observed: "Aesthetics and law are an odd couple, rather like spouses who come to their union from different worlds...Aspirational and abstract, aesthetics and law are elusive in themselves and mercurial when joined together."

ATHENA TACHA

In 1995, due to VARA (the Visual Artists' Rights Act of 1990), sculptor Jan Martin won a lawsuit against the City of Indianapolis and received full compensation for the destruction of his public sculpture, Symphony #1.  In 2000, VARA  saved my public sculpture, Memory Path, that the city of Sarasota wanted to remove.  The same year, Edison College of Fort Myers, FL, demolished my sculpture Marianthe, because the commission's contract, even though worded to secure the sculpture from disrepair and destruction, predated VARA legislation and was not automatically protected by law.  Nancy Holt, Judy Pfaff, Alan Sonfist also had their works destroyed.  More and more commissioning institutions and private clients force artists to waive their rights under VARA (or comparable State laws) when signing a contract.  In 1991, when I signed my contract for my park, Connections, in downtown Philadelphia, I was forced to relinquish most of my rights under the Pennsylvania Fine Arts Preservation Act.  Can artists with insufficient funds for legal resources fight this situation?  Can artists' organizations offer support or advise?

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Resources:

Joseph L. Sax. "Artists' Rights and Public Rights," Chapter 2, Part I of Playing Darts with a Rembrandt: Public and Private Rights in Cultural Treasures. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1999.

Visual Artists Rights Act and the provision for removing works of art fixed to buildings

From Monty Python to Leona Hemsley: A Guide to the Visual Artists Rights Act
by Cynthia Esworthy, NEA Office of General Counsel, JD Washington & Lee Law School 1997.
http://arts.endow.gov/artforms/Manage/VARA.html

Waiver of Moral Rights In Visual Artworks: Executive Summary
Directors of Educational Technology/California Higher Education
University of California, Santa Barbara
http://www.id.ucsb.edu/detche/library/www/fairuse/vara.html

The "Recognized Stature" Standard in the Visual Artists Rights Act
in Fordham Law Review, vol. 68, n. 5 (April 2000)
by Christopher J. Robinson (See excerpt from introduction, above.)

The Tilted Arc Controversy : Dangerous Precedent?
by Harriet F. Senie
Text of Chapter: The Public Policy Context,
and, for VARA and moral rights, see especially, from this point.

Harriet Senie. [Audio file: Interview about Tilted Arc on WNYC March 25, 2002] Tilting At Windmills-

Steven Weil, "The moral right comes to California," Art News, December 1979.

Walter Robinson, "Art and the Law: Moral Rights comes to New York," Art in America, October 1983.

Catherine Bostron, "The Moral Rights of Artists. Museums and the Law," Museum News, April 1984.

John Merryman and Albert Elsen, The Artists Rights in the Work of Art, Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts (Kluwer Law International, 1998), pp.231-294.

Jeffrey P. Cunard, CAA Counsel, with the assistance of his colleagues, Rebecca Tushnet and Christopher Robinson. "Artists and Celebrities: First Amendment v. Right of Publicity." CAA News, 2001

also:

Dancing in the Landscape : The Sculpture of Athena Tacha
by Harriet F. Senie, Glen Harper, Athena Tacha. Editor: James Grayson Trulove

Web-site of Athena Tacha,
and especially the story of the destruction of Marianthe

College Art Association documents on artist rights and contracts (pre VARA):

Public Art Works Recommendation by the Sub-Committee on Public Art of the Artists' Committee of the College Art Association of America.
Adopted by the CAA Board of Directors, October 31, 1987.
http://www.collegeart.org/caa/ethics/publicart.html

A Quick Guide to Artists' Rights Under the New Copyright Law.
Originally appeared in September 1977 CAA newsletter. by Gilbert S. Edelson, Honorary Counsel, CAA
http://www.collegeart.org/caa/ethics/artists_rights.html

Professional Practices for Artists Adopted by CAA Board of Directors, February 2, 1977
[with contribution by Athena Tacha]
http://www.collegeart.org/caa/ethics/prof_pract_artists.html

some findings from the Internet:

Moral Rights of Digital Artists,
an unpublished paper by Stephen J. Hyland, managing partner of the Hyland Law Firm, P.C. Houston Texas.http://www.computer-lawyer.com/moralrights.html

on the Copyright Office Five-Year Study on the Waiver of Moral rights
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/1996/96-045
GPO Bookstore offering the Copyright Office Five-Year Study
http://www.starvingartistslaw.com/copyright/Cadvanced.htm

Testimony presented on waiver of moral rights under the Visual Artists Rights Act on behalf of Graphic Artists
by Carol Pulin, Director of the American Print Alliance
http://www.printalliance.org/resources/re_testimony.html

Artists' Rights Foundation
Lobbies on behalf of Film Industry artists for moral rights
http://www.artistsrights.org/

Moral Rights Basics
from the The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/property/library/moralprimer.html

Copyright Information for Visual Artists from ArtSupport.com
http://art-support.com/copyright.htm

Life After the Federal Visual Artists Rights Act
(What artists can do when VARA fails.)
http://www.artslaw.org/VARA.HTM

On Artwork affixed to buildings or on building sites
http://www.tfaoi.com/articles/andres/aa7.htm

Artist Legal issues from StarvingArtistsLaw.com, a self-help group
http://www.starvingartistslaw.com/industries/fineart.htm and
http://www.starvingartistslaw.com/copyright/Cadvanced.htm

On preserving Los Angeles Murals, via VARA
http://www.lamurals.org/Newsletters/0199Newsltr/0199.html and
http://www.lamurals.org/MCLATechnical/Solomon1.html

Authors' and Artists' Moral Rights: A Comparative Legal and Economic Analysis
by Henry Hansmann and Marina Santilli, The University of Chicago, The Journal of Legal Studies, January, 1997
http://eon.law.harvard.edu/h2o/property/respect/hansmann.html

Taylor v. L.A. Parks and Recreation Commission (U.S. District Court, Central District) filed by the ACLU, 1998 (VARA related)
http://www.aclu-sc.org/litigation/docket/taylor.html

Course Description: Designing Cultural Policy, The University of Chicago, The Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies,
Professor J. Mark Schuster

Robert J. Cort v. St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Filed 25 November 2002.
Cort had bought a building with a mural (commissioned by the City of San Francisco) on the exterior wall.  When Cort used an opaque sealant to repair several leaks, the mural was no longer visible (and was subsequently painted over with an ad).  The representatives of the artist's estate sued Cort under VARA (and a related state law, CAPA).  Cort's insurance agent St. Paul refused to defend Cort, so Cort sued St. Paul for breach of contract and the court ruled in favor of St. Paul in this case.

Junked art work raises questions of value By LENNIE BENNETT © St. Petersburg Times, published January 18, 2003

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