On Mon, Apr 03, 2000, Pat Sloane <patsloane[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> On 04/03/2000, Carol Cricow <carol[_at_]yujean.com> wrote:
> >
> > There is hope tho as there are more and more Lawyers for the Arts
> > groups. There's one here in Eugene, Oregon and another in Portland
> > and a bigger one in Seattle. Lawyers who work in this area should
> > look into organizing such a group to help artists. There are
> > personal and professional benefits to doing some work pro bono and
> > to educating artists as to their rights.
> >
> > In the meantime, state bar associations will provide lists of
> > lawyers who specialize or focus their practices in certain areas
> > if the Yellow Pages fail you. It's worth asking.
>
> Like any funded entity, VLA requires virtually a poverty level income,
> which isn't as common as one might think among artists. They do a
> fine job for a lower income constituency, but I was thinking of a
> more middle class group that can afford to pay an attorney, but can't
> find an attorney familiar with that area. On referrals from the Bar
> association, keep in mind that arts law is highly specialized, as
> is, say, zoning. I once asked for a referral from the local Bar
> Association to an attorney who knew zoning and could file an Article
> 78 proceeding against the Department of Buildings. The best they
> could come up with was an attorney familiar with Section 8 housing,
> and who frequently filed Article 78 proceedings although he knew
> nothing about zoning. That was about as appealing as asking an
> attorney who specialized in divorce law to get involved in a case
> about corporate mergers.
>
> Twenty years later, I met an attorney who was also licensed as a
> professional engineer, and he would have been perfect. But he
> wouldn't have been available had I known him at the time, as he
> worked for a city agency. There's as big a gap in administrative
> law as in arts law. Attorneys who know zoning work either for large
> developers or municipal authorities. Attorneys who specialize in
> arts law work for major collectors, and in either case there's
> little or no incentive for the attorney to get involved with middle
> class individuals.
>
> One might think there would be a place for the general practitioner
> who handles a small amount of cases involving arts law. I'd want to
> consider that only on a case by case basis, and in most cases I'd
> be reluctant and really prefer a specialist. It's too stressful
> wondering whether an attorney who knows a certain amount about arts
> law really knows enough for the case at hand, and I've no way of
> determining this in advance, or in a timely manner. So I'd rather
> not take a chance. Here, and also in administrative law, it's too
> bad the Association of the Bar hasn't established some lower level
> of certification tailored to the needs of the part time practitioner.
> If I knew that an attorney had completed, say, a six-weeks course
> in art law or zoning law or education law, or law in any of a fairly
> large number of specialized administrative areas, that would at least
> give me some way of measuring in an area where no criteria are
> available to me at present. And, yes, I'd definitely go and look
> myself at the syllabus for the six-week course, to find out what it
> had covered.
>
> It seems to me that by the time middle class professionals get to an
> attorney, they've already done limited preliminary research, often
> from impeccable sources. Art magazines often run articles written
> by arts attorneys on laws that affect artists; art associations
> distribute information about these laws, and often hold conferences
> for artists on arts law; speakers are often well-known attorneys for
> major galleries or museums, or for agencies like the NEA. With
> administrative law, the first step is almost always to go to the
> agency charged with administering that body of law, because one of
> their responsibilities is to answer questions about their procedures:
> about what has to be done to challenge an agency determination.
> They'll give you the answers, right down to venue and what a
> successful challenge would have to establish. So one usually isn't
> totally at sea by the time one gets to an attorney's office, and this
> helps. But the plain fact is that there aren't enough attorneys in
> this area, and they need an upper-income or corporate clientele.
>
> I think there might be less of a problem with, say, entertainment
> law, because so many entertainers draw in phenomenal incomes that
> are well above middle class levels. Pro bono is not an answer,
> because attorneys can't and shouldn't be compelled to do this.
> And, as a client, I don't think that getting the best possible
> representation is consistent with being somebody's charity case.
Pat -- Certainly another avenue for artists or arts professionals needing help with copyright questions is through their professional organizations. The College Art Association (CAA) and the American Association of Museums (AAM) work with arts lawyers who might be able to provide some guidance or direction in such legal matters. Your legal questions or problems are important to them. Recently the AAM published _A Museum Guide to Copyright and Trademark_ (see online <http://www.aam-us.org/museum-guide-toc.htm>) largely based on scenarios that derive from current practices. The CAA is working on a Q&A regarding copyright & the arts hoping to address the needs of the artist-practitioner as well as the artist-teacher plus art historians, museum curators, and independent art scholars. This ambitious project needs help from people like you. The area of arts law, as you mention, is not over populated with experts and yet a lot of work needs to be done to clarify issues that affect the creators and users of art. Your experience would be valuable in many of today's ongoing efforts to understand the law in the context of art.
Christine L. Sundt
Visual Resources Curator
Architecture & Allied Arts Library
University of Oregon
Lawrence Hall - Room 300
Eugene, OR 97403-5249
PHONE: 541-346-2209
FAX: 541-346-2205
csundt[_at_]oregon.uoregon.edu http://libweb.uoregon.edu/aaa/vrc/VRCinfo.html http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~csundt/index.htmCopyright & Arts Issues: http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~csundt/cweb.htm Received on Tue Apr 04 2000 - 15:43:40 GMT
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