I’m in Los Angeles for the College Art Association annual conference. There are an estimated 5,000 art historians, professors of fine arts, students of fine arts, and practicing artists here. Spread throughout the Los Angeles Convention Center, sessions cover a wide range of topics that would seem to intrigue the most advanced scholar – from “Altars, Relics, and Ascetics: The Invention of Religion in Contemporary Art” to “Urban Pacific: Art in Aotearoa New Zealand” – artists share their portfolios, and aspiring educators sign up for interviews with a range of universities.

The trade show – where the Copyright Alliance has a booth – is spattered with dozens of book publishers highlighting books on art history and contemporary artists; the largest, most prolific of art supply providers; smaller, more unique niche supplies like the company that sells handmade paints; and companies that provide either educational offerings or professional services for artists.

It is a marvel for the eye to see the array of color in paints, pastels, and book covers. (And, of course, for the most tactile of us, we are allowed to play with the pastels, paints, and pencils. An activity which keeps booth visitors lingering…)

Until this conference, I have not had the privilege to engage in much conversation with so many art historians – those who spend their life’s work discovering, researching, and documenting the many facets of art and its impact on culture and society. Their keen insight, which comes from years of historical study, offers a multi-faceted perspective on a variety of subjects.

And, of course, at our booth, we primarily talk about copyright. Art historians are eager to engage in conversation about copyright, are excited that the Copyright Alliance is able to answer their nagging questions, and are thankful for the resources that we have to use in their classrooms and give to their students.

Many of their students are fine artists, they tell me, and they don’t yet have the knowledge about how to protect their works with copyright. So, they are eager to share our materials with their classrooms. (Many schools offer a “professional practices” class which addresses copyright, among other issues).

Yet, an art historian’s primary purpose is to document the history of art, and not all of them are focusing on works that are out of the public domain. And so, I hear of the processes (and sometimes challenges) that they go through in order to acquire permissions for photos and works of art that they use in books or manuscripts.

Though some of them have lamented that the process can be tedious, they respect and understand the need for the process. Either they are working visual artists themselves who want to protect their own creative works. Or, they are educators of visual artists that make a living (or hope to) off their work. And, of course, they want to protect their published books as well!

So, though it seems that they straddle the fence between wanting easier ways to acquire permission to use copyrighted works, and at the same time, maintain strong copyright protection for working artists, they are quite balanced on it.

After all, one person alluded, if we are not protecting the rights of artists to maintain control and make a living off their works now, what will art historians have to document in the future?

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:44 pm by Lucinda M. Dugger and is filed under copyright law, creators, education, events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.