CAA News Today
Contemporary Art Galleries in Downtown Los Angeles
posted by Christopher Howard — Dec 18, 2008
Since the mid-1950s, Los Angeles has been a hotbed of new art and groundbreaking galleries, museums, and other art spaces and institutions. Throughout the greater Los Angeles area are many pockets of art-world panache, from Malibu to Culver City to Chinatown. With CAA’s 2009 Annual Conference headquartered at the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown LA, CAA News features the robust gallery culture there and in its subdistricts.
CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERIES IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES
posted by Christopher Howard — Dec 18, 2008
Since the mid-1950s, Los Angeles has been a hotbed of new art and groundbreaking galleries, museums, and other art spaces and institutions. Throughout the greater LA area are many pockets of art-world panache, from Malibu to Culver City to Chinatown. With the 2009 conference headquartered at the Los Angeles Convention Center in downtown LA, we thought we would start with a focus on the robust gallery culture there and in its subdistricts.
CHINATOWN
Claudia Parducci, Shatter-5, 2007, oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 in. (artwork © Claudia Parducci)
A short walk or cab ride from the conference, Chinatown has a long history of culture and commerce dating back to the late nineteenth century. In the 1930s, Chinatown’s central plaza saw development as a tourist attraction with the creative help of Hollywood set designers. The cinematic simulacrum of Chung King Road is now the high street of the area’s gallery scene. While the art that is shown is cutting-edge contemporary, the galleries still pay tribute to the culture and history of Chinatown, often repurposing the original storefront names to give us spaces called China Art Objects, Black Dragon Society, and the Happy Lion.
Recommended Galleries
A nonprofit organization since 2003, Telic Arts Exchange serves as a platform for exhibitions, performances, screenings, lectures, and discussions on art, architecture, and media, with an emphasis on social exchange, interactivity, and public participation. From its basement location, Betalevel similarly operates as a studio, club, stage, and screening space. Its members are artists, programmers, writers, designers, agitprop specialists, filmmakers, and reverse engineers.
The bad-boy scenesters of contemporary art, including Dash Snow, Dan Colen, Bruce Labruce, and Terence Koh, are represented by Peres Projects. Here you’ll find edgy, trendy, abrasive, and provocative art, often collaged from detritus and other nonart materials—the stuff recent biennials are made of.
Installation view of Christopher Michlig’s exhibition Negations at Jail in 2008 (artworks © Christopher Michlig; photograph by Peter Lograsso and provided by Jail)
Black Dragon Society is another uber-hip gallery that focuses largely on painting, such as the faux-naïve, Mad magazine–inspired work of Steve Canaday and the informal portraiture of Raffi Kalenderian. China Art Objects features artists such as Walead Beshty, Pae White, and Bjorn Copeland, who also performs in the noise band Black Dice.
Presenting installation, video, new media, and technology-minded work, Fringe Exhibitions opened in 2006 with work by Survival Research Laboratories. The gallery’s website features a Net art project each month.
Kontainer has a painting-heavy roster, and Acuna-Hansen Gallery presents a number of drawing specialists, such as Eric Beltz and Tracy Nakayama, in addition to artists who work in photography and sculpture. The Fifth Floor Gallery and David Salow Gallery were two of nine Chinatown venues that hosted CalArts’ MFA exhibition, We Want a New Object, in May 2008. Both feature artists working in diverse mediums.
Mesler and Hug Gallery is big on multimedia installation, and Bonelli Contemporary maintains an Italian presence in Chinatown, showing mostly painting and drawing. High Energy Constructs is an exhibition and performance venue, and the Mountain Bar, a nightclub and gallery space, is a central hangout spot for artists and anchors the area.
Other recommended spaces include Farmlab/Under Spring Gallery; Mandarin; Happy Lion Gallery; LMAN Gallery; and Sister. Cottage Home is a unique venue run by Sister, China Art Objects, and Tom Solomon Gallery, with monthly solo and group shows alternately staged by each gallery.
GALLERY ROW
Another area downtown, located just a short walk or bus ride from the convention-center complex, is Gallery Row. A seven-block concentration of galleries in the very center of downtown, Gallery Row was designated by city council in 2003 as a thriving, pedestrian-friendly, culturally abundant, urban locus of art and nightlife. In a few short years, this experiment in urban planning has changed these blocks into a spontaneous laboratory of street art and creative culture, with fashion shows, live music, spoken word, and traditional art exhibitions. The following galleries are located in or near this area.
Recommended Galleries
Pharmaka is a nonprofit gallery in downtown Los Angeles
Located in the main lobby of the Banco Popular Building, *BANK has developed a distinctive curatorial platform showcasing emerging and midcareer artists, such as the work of Paul Butler, known not only for his own work but also for his Collage Parties. MATERIAL, a critical arts journal, is a creation of the *BANK artist Kim Schoen and Ginny Cook. Similarly, a new nonprofit organization called Phantom Galleries LA places temporary art installations in vacant storefront windows throughout Los Angeles County; its call for proposals is open ended.
Established in spring 2007, Morono Kiang Gallery promotes contemporary art by both recognized and emerging artists, focusing on Chinese art from the last decade. Recently shown artists include Xu Bing, Ai Weiwei, Li Jin, and Liu Qinghe.
Jail presents solid curated group shows, including Hef, dedicated to the founder of Playboy magazine, as well as solo exhibitions by emerging artists such as Christopher Michlig. Bert Green Fine Art focuses on contemporary painting and work on paper. Recently shown were works by the underground fanzine legend Dame Darcy and the horror novelist Clive Barker.
Founded in 1979, LA Artcore is an established nonprofit with two gallery spaces for solo, two-person, and thematic group shows. The space also hosts international and regional exchange shows. The newer Pharmaka, another nonprofit space, stages curated exhibitions while also programming lectures, panel discussions, podcasts, and accessible community events.
Other neighborhood highlights include Compact Space, which recently moved to the area, and De Soto, which is strong on photography. The work of gallery artist Connie Samaras appeared on the cover of the Summer 2008 issue of X-TRA, a Los Angeles–based quarterly art magazine.
Rounding out the recommended downtown galleries is the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, which in addition to staging group exhibitions offers large-format printing from artists’ and photographers’ digital files with an Epson 9800 archival printer.
MORE TO COME
There’s lots more to downtown Los Angeles, with the Museum of Contemporary Art, the REDCAT Galleries and Theater, and the Frank Gehry–designed Walt Disney Concert Hall. Keep an eye out in upcoming issues of CAA News and at www.collegeart.org to see the growing list of galleries, previews, and highlights of the Los Angeles scene, a West Coast bastion of culture and cool.
Arts Policy Brief Sent to Obama Transition Office
posted by Christopher Howard — Dec 08, 2008
The Arts Education Network Weekly News reports that several national arts and arts education organizations have submitted a policy brief on the arts to President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team. The brief covers recommendations for the National Endowment for the Arts; cultural exchange; arts education in school, work, and life; national service and the arts; and the role of the arts in nonprofit communities. The brief also requests that the incoming president appoint a senior-level administration official to coordinate arts and cultural policy.
According to the brief, “The arts and cultural community welcomes the opportunity to communicate with President-Elect Obama and his staff in re-imagining how the federal government can inspire and support creativity in communities nationwide through robust policies that advance participation in the arts for all Americans.”
The following are the recommendations proposed for arts education:
- Prevent economic status and geographic location from denying students a comprehensive arts education
- Ensure equitable access to the full benefits of arts education when reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act so that all, not just some, students can learn to their full potential
- Exercise leadership to encourage arts-based and other creative learning environments for academically at-risk students participating in Title I-funded programs
- Retain the arts in the definition of core academic subjects of learning and reauthorize the Arts in Education Programs of the US Department of Education
- Fund after-school arts learning opportunities and support arts-education partnerships between schools and community arts and cultural organizations
- Move federal policy beyond simply declaring the arts as a core academic subject to actually implementing arts education as an essential subject of learning
- Require states to issue annual public reports on the local status and condition of arts education and other core academic subjects
- Improve national data collection and research in arts education
- Invest in professional development opportunities for teachers in the arts
- Deploy arts education as an economic-development strategy
- Authorize and encourage inclusion of arts learning in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) initiatives in order to foster imagination and innovation. Without the arts, STEM falls short of its potential to advance education and workforce development
- Fully preparing students with the creative skills they will need to advance our nation’s position in the twenty-first-century global economy requires implementing the arts as a core subject of learning and ensuring that all students attain cultural literacy
- Ensure that the full range of federal initiatives that advance workforce development, such as Department of Labor programs, provide training in the skills of creativity and imagination
Among the many joining organizations are Americans for the Arts, the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Literary Network, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the National Council for Traditional Arts, and the National Performance Network.
Arts Policy Brief Sent to Obama Transition Office
posted by Christopher Howard — Dec 08, 2008
The Arts Education Network Weekly News reports that several national arts and arts education organizations have submitted a policy brief on the arts to President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team. The brief covers recommendations for the National Endowment for the Arts; cultural exchange; arts education in school, work, and life; national service and the arts; and the role of the arts in nonprofit communities. The brief also requests that the incoming president appoint a senior-level administration official to coordinate arts and cultural policy.
According to the brief, “The arts and cultural community welcomes the opportunity to communicate with President-Elect Obama and his staff in re-imagining how the federal government can inspire and support creativity in communities nationwide through robust policies that advance participation in the arts for all Americans.”
The following are the recommendations proposed for arts education:
- Prevent economic status and geographic location from denying students a comprehensive arts education
- Ensure equitable access to the full benefits of arts education when reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act so that all, not just some, students can learn to their full potential
- Exercise leadership to encourage arts-based and other creative learning environments for academically at-risk students participating in Title I-funded programs
- Retain the arts in the definition of core academic subjects of learning and reauthorize the Arts in Education Programs of the US Department of Education
- Fund after-school arts learning opportunities and support arts-education partnerships between schools and community arts and cultural organizations
- Move federal policy beyond simply declaring the arts as a core academic subject to actually implementing arts education as an essential subject of learning
- Require states to issue annual public reports on the local status and condition of arts education and other core academic subjects
- Improve national data collection and research in arts education
- Invest in professional development opportunities for teachers in the arts
- Deploy arts education as an economic-development strategy
- Authorize and encourage inclusion of arts learning in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) initiatives in order to foster imagination and innovation. Without the arts, STEM falls short of its potential to advance education and workforce development
- Fully preparing students with the creative skills they will need to advance our nation’s position in the twenty-first-century global economy requires implementing the arts as a core subject of learning and ensuring that all students attain cultural literacy
- Ensure that the full range of federal initiatives that advance workforce development, such as Department of Labor programs, provide training in the skills of creativity and imagination
Among the many joining organizations are Americans for the Arts, the American Association of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Literary Network, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the National Council for Traditional Arts, and the National Performance Network.
Morey and Barr Award Finalists
posted by Lauren Stark — Nov 11, 2008
CAA is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2009 Charles Rufus Morey Book Award and the Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award. The winners of both prizes, along with the recipients of other Awards for Distinction, will be announced in mid-December and presented in February during Convocation at the 2009 Annual Conference in Los Angeles.
The Charles Rufus Morey Book Award honors an especially distinguished book in the history of art, published in any language between September 1, 2007, and August 31, 2008. The finalists are:
- Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, Artisans in Early Imperial China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007)
- Jennifer A. González, Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008)
- D. Fairchild Ruggles, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008)
- Harvey Stahl, Picturing Kingship: History and Painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008)
The Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Award for museum scholarship is presented to the author(s) of an especially distinguished catalogue in the history of art, published between September 1, 2007, and August 31, 2008, under the auspices of a museum, library, or collection. The finalists are:
- Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester, and Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, eds., Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2007)
- Wolfram Koeppe and Annamaria Giusti, Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure from the Palaces of Europe (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2008)
- Terese Tse Bartholomew and John Johnston, eds., The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan (Chicago: Serindia Publications, in association with the Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Kingdom of Bhutan, 2008)
- Shelley Bennett and Carolyn Sargentson, eds., French Art of the Eighteenth Century at the Huntington (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, in association with Yale University Press, 2008)
A second Barr award will be awarded, intended for but not restricted to smaller museums, libraries, or collections. It takes into consideration the size of the collection or exhibition. The two finalists are:
- Phillip Earenfight, ed., A Kiowa’s Odyssey: A Sketchbook from Fort Marion (Seattle: University of Washington Press, in association with the Trout Gallery, Dickinson College, 2007)
- Ella Reitsma, assisted by Sandrine Ulenberg, Maria Sibylla Merian and Daughters: Women of Art and Science (Zwolle, the Netherlands: Waanders, in collaboration with the Rembrandt House Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008)
Convocation at the 2009 Annual Conference takes place on Wednesday evening, February 25, 5:30–7:00 PM, in West Hall Meeting Room 502AB at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The event is free and open to the public.
For more information about CAA’s Awards for Distinction, please contact Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, at 212-691-1051, ext. 248.
Free Digital Images for Scholarly Publications
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 16, 2008
CAA reminds you that three major museums—the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York—have made digital images of works from their collections available for free for scholarly publications.
National Gallery
As part of its ongoing commitment to support scholarship and encourage research into England’s collection of old-master paintings, the National Gallery waives reproduction charges for digital images for use in academic books and journals that meet specific criteria and where orders are processed and delivered via its Picture Library website. Authors publishing academic work relating to the gallery’s collection are encouraged to use high-quality digital images available only from National Gallery Images, where charges will be waived for nonprofit, short-run publications. Discounts are also available for image use in student theses, academic presentations or lectures, and noncommercial private use.
Images are available at A4 and A5 at 300 dpi/ppi. The picture files themselves are derived from fully color-calibrated digital-image files created by the National Gallery. The color is therefore consistent across all images in the collection, meaning image users are able to make informed comparisons about color, tone, and brightness, and be assured of consistent color reproduction through to print.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Since early 2007, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London has ended charging reproduction fees for its images used in scholarly publications. Publishers will be able to download images from the museum’s collection of more than 25,000 works directly from its website.
The museum keeps a broad definition of “scholarly.” The images will be available to students and teachers, as well as to publishers, for use in their research and coursework. The museum will continue to charge commercial publications, but their termination of fees for reproduction may encourage other institutions to follow suit.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
In 2007 the Metropolitan Museum of Art formed a partnership, called Images for Academic Publishing, with the nonprofit digital-image provider ARTstor to offer high-resolution digital images of artworks in its collection for scholarly publication—free of charge. This initiative is intended to make it easier and less expensive for authors and publishers license images for reproduction. Under a special agreement with ARTstor, this service will be available to users—both individual and institutional—who are not ARTstor subscribers.
With this important step in overcoming a longstanding obstacle to scholarly art publication, the museum aims to serve its scholarly mission by disentangling many of its most frequently requested works of art from the burden of permissions paperwork—and from the confusion that often accompanies image rental, artwork copyright, photographic copyright, and licensing. Included are many works whose copyrights have expired (generally, works created before 1923 or whose creators died more than seventy years ago) are in this cluster of images. In some instances, however, third-party copyright permissions may be needed (such as where the underlying work in an image is still under copyright). Other terms and conditions also apply.
More Information
For more information on CAA’s work on digital images, publishing, copyright, and more, please see the Intellectual Property and the Arts section of the website.
CAA Member Survey Results
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 15, 2008
CAA warmly thanks the 831 participants in a recent email survey, which was sent to 8,300 members whose database records indicate that their primary profession is: art/architectural historian, artist, administrator, curator, art-museum educator, or librarian. The results of the survey will be presented at the Board of Directors’ Strategic Planning Retreat on October 25, 2008, and will be incorporated into discussions on how to better serve all CAA members in the new strategic plan.
The survey contained one open-ended question: “What are the most pressing issues you face in your profession?” The following summary provides a synopsis of your responses, which are recorded in order of priority and frequency; many respondents gave multiple answers.
Art/Architectural Historians – 455 respondents
33% – Decrease in positions; increase in PhDs; reduction of tenured positions and increase in part-time and adjunct positions
17% – Difficulty finding publishers; insufficient number of art journals; decrease in presses publishing art history; tenure requirement for monographs vs. few presses publishing monographs
16% – Limited research funds and high cost of travel
13% – Work load vs. keeping up with the field and quality of life
11% – High cost of image reproduction; copyright restrictions
7% – Low salaries and need for pay equity
7% – Issues regarding resources and attention devoted to historical art vs. contemporary art; Western vs. non-Western art; national vs. global; traditional curriculum, research, and pedagogy vs. interdisciplinary curriculum, research, and pedagogy
7% – New technology demands: cost, training, accessibility
5% – Need for American public understanding of art and combating anti-intellectualism
4% – Viability, credibility, and relevance of art history to other disciplines
Artists – 305 respondents
40% – Earning enough to support creative work; finding jobs and job security
23% – Finding reliable galleries; support for exhibitions; support for creative work and research
19% – Need for exposure of work, networking, and negotiating the art world
17% – Low salaries and need for pay equity
13% – Reduction of tenured positions and increase in part-time and adjunct positions
5% – Maintaining art as a critical discipline on all levels of education
5% – Need for health insurance
5% – Heavy teaching load and higher expectations for productivity
5% – Need for greater preparation of entering students
Administrators – 47 respondents
45% – Decrease in federal, state, and private funding for research, travel, faculty, staff, and technology
10% – Decrease in scholarships and fellowships
10% – Reduction of full-time faculty and increase in part-time faculty
10% – Recruitment of qualified candidates for faculty positions given the expansion of disciplines and need for pedagogical expertise
7% – Decreased enrollment
6% – Need for pay equity between art historians and artists
5% – Work load vs. keeping up with the field
4% – Blurring of disciplines and need for curriculum revision; new forms of assessment
Curators – 14 respondents
44% – Financial stability of art museums; decrease in funds for research and scholarly exhibitions
19% – High stress, long hours, and diminished staff positions
15% – Devaluation of research
10% – How to communicate with the public
10% – Low salaries and need for pay equity
5% – Demands of exhibition funders
Art-Museum Educations – 6 respondents
25% – High stress, long hours, and diminished staff positions
10% – Maintaining links between museum educators and art historians
10% – Low salaries and need for pay equity
5% – Decrease in funds for public programs
Art Librarians – 4 respondents
30% – New technology equipment costs, training, and research
25% – Decreased funds for purchase of books and periodicals
10% – Recruitment of qualified candidates for staff positions
Because many respondents gave more than one answer, the percentages do not always add up to 100 percent.
CAA Statement on Orphan-Works Legislation
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 09, 2008
For several years, Congress has been considering legislation to address issues raised by orphan works. Orphan works are works that are still in copyright, but where the copyright holder cannot be found and the rights cleared. Most recently, in September 2008, the Senate passed S.2913, the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008. CAA has been supporting this legislation, as a boon for both CAA’s artist and scholar members.
CAA is the nation’s largest organization representing the visual-arts communities. With its wide-ranging membership, including artists, scholars, museums, and other visual-arts professionals, CAA has been involved in discussions on orphan-work legislation from the beginning. With the assistance of anecdotes from scores of its members CAA filed substantial comments with the US Copyright Office in March 2005, identifying circumstances in which current copyright law impairs the use of orphan works in artistic and scholarly works alike and proposing a legislative approach that would balance the legitimate interest of creators, copyright owners, and users. CAA also participated in roundtable discussions held by the Copyright Office. In January 2006, the Copyright Office issued a report that cited the CAA’s comments and recommended adoption of orphan-works legislation, including conditions that would appropriately balance the interests of contemporary artists and other copyright owners with the interests of users of orphan works.
From the time that such legislation was first introduced, in May 2006, to implement the recommendations of the Copyright Office and, throughout the 110th Congress, CAA has been working with other organizations—including museums, universities, libraries, and commercial publishers, as well as the Copyright Office—in crafting orphan-works legislation. The purpose of the legislation is to amend the copyright law to allow orphan works to be used without an undue risk to the user—of statutory damages or an injunction—assuming that the user conducted a diligent search for the copyright owner and properly attributed the work as an orphan work. At the same time, CAA, with its membership of artists, designers, and photographers, has taken full account of their concerns that orphan-works legislation, if enacted, would allow bad-actor copyright infringers to avoid copyright liability. In particular, CAA is aware of fears that artists whose works cannot easily be signed, or have other identifying information attached to them, might readily become orphaned and, in this way, be used unfairly and unscrupulously, without appropriate compensation and attribution.
CAA supports legislation that would require users of orphan works to conduct diligent searches to identify and locate copyright owners as a precondition of works becoming eligible for orphan-works treatment. The search requirements that CAA supports are detailed and meaningful, but they also are not unduly burdensome. They include searches of Copyright Office records and the use of other appropriate databases and other resources. The requirement that the user conduct a diligent search, with the parameters of such a search elaborated in the legislation itself, is intended to ensure that copyright owners would not be at risk from bad-faith searches. CAA also has been working hard to ensure that, should there ever be litigation surrounding the use of an orphan work, the burden would be on the user to demonstrate that his or her search was diligent. In addition, CAA supports legislation that would permit courts to pay heed to best practices for searches that would be crafted by professional organizations, such as CAA. If the legislation is enacted, then CAA will be uniquely well-suited to develop and promulgate guidelines on best practices for searches, given the wide range of interests of its members and the wide spectrum of copyrighted works that they create and use.
Finally, CAA encourages artists to consider the advantages of registering their works with the US Copyright Office. Under the legislation supported by CAA, in coalition with other visual-arts organizations, ordinarily, for a search of an orphan-work copyright owner to qualify as diligent, the user generally should search the Copyright Office’s registration records, as reasonable under the circumstances. By registering their works, CAA’s members will be better able to protect their creative property while allowing for appropriate and lawful use under the copyright law.
CAA Statement on Orphan-Works Legislation
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 09, 2008
For several years, Congress has been considering legislation to address issues raised by orphan works. Orphan works are works that are still in copyright, but where the copyright holder cannot be found and the rights cleared. Most recently, in September 2008, the Senate passed S.2913, the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008. CAA has been supporting this legislation, as a boon for both CAA’s artist and scholar members.
CAA is the nation’s largest organization representing the visual-arts communities. With its wide-ranging membership, including artists, scholars, museums, and other visual-arts professionals, CAA has been involved in discussions on orphan-work legislation from the beginning. With the assistance of anecdotes from scores of its members CAA filed substantial comments with the US Copyright Office in March 2005, identifying circumstances in which current copyright law impairs the use of orphan works in artistic and scholarly works alike and proposing a legislative approach that would balance the legitimate interest of creators, copyright owners, and users. CAA also participated in roundtable discussions held by the Copyright Office. In January 2006, the Copyright Office issued a report that cited the CAA’s comments and recommended adoption of orphan-works legislation, including conditions that would appropriately balance the interests of contemporary artists and other copyright owners with the interests of users of orphan works.
From the time that such legislation was first introduced, in May 2006, to implement the recommendations of the Copyright Office and, throughout the 110th Congress, CAA has been working with other organizations—including museums, universities, libraries, and commercial publishers, as well as the Copyright Office—in crafting orphan-works legislation. The purpose of the legislation is to amend the copyright law to allow orphan works to be used without an undue risk to the user—of statutory damages or an injunction—assuming that the user conducted a diligent search for the copyright owner and properly attributed the work as an orphan work. At the same time, CAA, with its membership of artists, designers, and photographers, has taken full account of their concerns that orphan-works legislation, if enacted, would allow bad-actor copyright infringers to avoid copyright liability. In particular, CAA is aware of fears that artists whose works cannot easily be signed, or have other identifying information attached to them, might readily become orphaned and, in this way, be used unfairly and unscrupulously, without appropriate compensation and attribution.
CAA supports legislation that would require users of orphan works to conduct diligent searches to identify and locate copyright owners as a precondition of works becoming eligible for orphan-works treatment. The search requirements that CAA supports are detailed and meaningful, but they also are not unduly burdensome. They include searches of Copyright Office records and the use of other appropriate databases and other resources. The requirement that the user conduct a diligent search, with the parameters of such a search elaborated in the legislation itself, is intended to ensure that copyright owners would not be at risk from bad-faith searches. CAA also has been working hard to ensure that, should there ever be litigation surrounding the use of an orphan work, the burden would be on the user to demonstrate that his or her search was diligent. In addition, CAA supports legislation that would permit courts to pay heed to best practices for searches that would be crafted by professional organizations, such as CAA. If the legislation is enacted, then CAA will be uniquely well-suited to develop and promulgate guidelines on best practices for searches, given the wide range of interests of its members and the wide spectrum of copyrighted works that they create and use.
Finally, CAA encourages artists to consider the advantages of registering their works with the US Copyright Office. Under the legislation supported by CAA, in coalition with other visual-arts organizations, ordinarily, for a search of an orphan-work copyright owner to qualify as diligent, the user generally should search the Copyright Office’s registration records, as reasonable under the circumstances. By registering their works, CAA’s members will be better able to protect their creative property while allowing for appropriate and lawful use under the copyright law.
US Ratifies Treaty to Protect Cultural Property in Time of War
posted by Christopher Howard — Oct 02, 2008
On September 25, 2008, the United States Senate voted to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. This international convention regulates the conduct of nations during war and military occupation in order to assure the protection of cultural sites, monuments, and repositories, including museums, libraries, and archives. Written in the wake of the widespread cultural devastation perpetrated by Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and modeled on instructions given by General Dwight Eisenhower to aid in the preservation of Europe’s cultural legacy, the Hague Convention is the oldest international agreement to address exclusively cultural-heritage preservation. The US now joins 121 other nations in becoming a party to this historic treaty. By taking this significant step, the US demonstrates its commitment to the preservation of the world’s cultural, artistic, religious, and historic legacy.
Although the US signed the convention soon after its writing, the Pentagon objected to ratification because of increasing cold-war tensions. Only with the collapse of the Soviet Union did the US military withdraw its objections, and President Bill Clinton transmitted the convention to the Senate in 1999. The public attention given to the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in 2003 and the looting of archaeological sites in southern Iraq during the ensuing years revived interest in the convention, and the Senate finally voted to give its advice and consent to ratification last week.
A number of understandings were established in connection with the ratification, mostly to ensure that the convention does not interfere substantially with the US military’s ability to wage war. The final element of the ratification is a “declaration,” which states that the treaty, though self-executing: (a) does not require the US government to prosecute anyone who violates the convention (implicitly meaning that such prosecution is required only if a US law is also violated); and (b) does not give individual persons a right of redress in US courts.
Peter Tompa at the Cultural Property Observer provides a summary and commentary on what happened in the Senate. CAA has posted PDFs of both the introduction of the Hague Convention to the Senate by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the ratification of the treaty, from the Congressional Record.
Statements by Hague Convention Advocates
While US policy has been to follow the principles of the convention, ratification will raise the imperative of protecting cultural heritage during conflict, including the incorporation of heritage preservation into military planning; ratification will also clarify the United States’ obligations and encourage the training of military personnel in cultural-heritage preservation and the recruitment of cultural-heritage professionals into the military. Cori Wegener, president of the US Committee of the Blue Shield (USCBS), noted that “Ratification of the Hague Convention provides a renewed opportunity to highlight cultural-property training for US military personnel at all levels, and to call attention to cultural-property considerations in the early stages of military planning. The US Committee of the Blue Shield will continue its commitment to offering cultural-property training and coordination with the US military and to increase public awareness about the 1954 Hague Convention and its international symbol, the Blue Shield.”
Patty Gerstenblith, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP), cited among the advantages of ratification, “Most importantly, it sends a clear signal to other nations that the United States respects their cultural heritage and will facilitate US cooperation with its allies and coalition partners in achieving more effective preservation efforts in areas of armed conflict.”
The Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) has advocated ratification of the Hague Convention for more than fifteen years. John Russell, AIA vice president for professional responsibilities, commented that “By ratifying the 1954 Hague Convention, the US has affirmed its commitment to protecting cultural property during armed conflict. The Archaeological Institute of America will continue to work with the Department of Defense to integrate the Convention’s provisions fully and consistently into the US military training curriculum at all levels.”
Since the founding of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation in 2004 and of the US Committee of the Blue Shield in 2006, ratification has been among their primary priorities. AIA, LCCHP, and USCBS formed a coalition of preservation organizations that submitted testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in support of ratification and worked with members of the Senate to achieve this historic step. The Statement in Support of US Ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention urging Senate ratification, joined by twelve other cultural preservation organizations, is available from LCCHP.
LCCHP acknowledges the additional assistance of the Society for American Archaeology and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago in the effort to achieve ratification of the Hague Convention.
CAA Standards and Guidelines
CAA has advocated for the ratification of the convention for decades. CAA has also published its own Standards and Guidelines on issues related to international cultural heritage: the CAA Statement on the Importance of Documenting the Historical Context of Objects and Sites (2004), A Code of Ethics for Art Historians and Guidelines for the Professional Practice of Art History (1995), part of which addresses trafficking in works of art; and the Resolution Concerning the Acquisition of Cultural Properties Originating in Foreign Countries (1973).