Do You Know VARA? Is Your Visual Art Protected?

Recently, a local law firm invited the public for an art installation, which was hosted at the firm’s office. Each room and some halls were decorated with oil paintings, black and white photographic stills, and mixed media images. As an attendee of this event and a lover of visual artists, I began to think about what laws protect the visual artist’s public display of their art. Have you ever attended an art installation outside of a museum or art gallery? Did you know that visual artists are protected outside of copyright laws?

While you may be well versed in the Lanham Act and Copyright Laws, are you familiar with the Visual Arts Rights Act (“VARA”)? VARA protects visual artists and their works. VARA grants visual artists the right to claim authorship of their work of art, prevents others from misusing their name, and grants the right to object to the mutilation, destruction, or modification of their work of art. VARA describes visual works as drawings, prints, sculptures, or photographic stills, created for exhibition purposes. Copies of these visual works are limited to 200 copies.

VARA, as of record, does not protect electronic media reproduced for exhibitions. Why do you think that is? As soon as a picture hits social media, it could be shared by millions of users. A picture that hits social media would make it hard to track down the original author of a particular image. It would even be harder to decipher the original from images that might have been modified. Is there a way to get around these obstacles? Could we use IP addresses and electronically generated dates to discover the original visual artist of an electronic media? If so, are courts too bothered with much more “serious” docket issues than dealing with millions of modified selfies? Applications for constructing and disseminating images are speedily published and tend to work outside of our outdated legislation for visual artists.

As a matter of fact, Adobe Capture allows artists (like myself) to capture images developed with pen and paper and convert those images into electronic media. As an entrepreneur and designer, I transfer those designs onto clothing. But what if I wanted to take those images and use them for exhibitions? What obstacles would I have to overcome? It appears that if the images are not originals or limited to copies of 200, then these images are not afforded protection by VARA. Are there any other solutions for visual artists for hire?

By: Denise Gregory, Associate Editor of Art, Publishing, Music, and Fashion

Photo credit: Dennis Jarvis via flickr.com cc

Sources Used:

http://www.ivanhoffman.com/vara.html

http://www.copyright.gov/reports/exsum.html