You Made It, But Do You Own It?

panel for “The Legal Side of Art Collaboration”

That was the question being addressed in the school’s recent panel entitled “The Legal Side of Art Collaboration”. Taking place on May 10th, it inaugurated the Colloquium Room in the school’s new Contemporary Art Center with a survey of the legal traps that lie in wait for artists who collaborate on making new work.

At the outset, the ‘rules of the road’ were laid out by Tony Reese, a faculty member at the UCI Law School, Jonathan Pink, a media lawyer with the firm of Bryan Cave, and UCI campus counsel Kyhm Penfil. Following this, a lively discussion of various difficulties encountered by working artists was inaugurated by Studio Art faculty member Antoinette LaFarge and members of the audience.

The symposium was so well attended and received such enthusiastic responses that there is a plan for a sequel in 2011-12 that will address the even more vexed legal issues surrounding appropriation in art.

Photo: From left to right: CTSA dean Joseph E. Lewis III, Studio Art faculty member Antoinette LaFarge, UCI campus counsel Kyhm Penfil, Bryan Cave lawyer Jonathan Pink, and UCI Law School faculty member Tony Reese.