Law Ethics And the Visual Arts Author:John Henry Merryman Since its first edition in 1979, Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts established itself as the leading art law text among law professors, students, and practitioners. This new and newly illustrated, fifth edition, revised in collaboration with Stephen K. Urice, incorporates recent changes in treaty, statutory, and case law. It include... more »s discussion of recent developments from the resurgence of iconoclasm to military conflicts' depredations on cultural property. As in earlier editions, the authors present legal issues in their historical contexts. The broad range of topics addressed in the 5th edition, makes the text especially adaptable for use in multiple classroom settings. These topics include:
U.S. museums' return of works of art and antiquities to claimants such as Holocaust survivors and foreign nations
Artist's rights such as copyright and moral rights
International movement of art and antiquities
Fakes and forgeries in the art market
The inner workings of art auctions
Plundering and destruction of works of art in times of war and military conflict
Censorship of obscene or politically challenging works of art
And many more
In this edition, documents previously presented in a separate documentary appendix have been integrated into the text to provide immediate access to important treaties and other materials. Whether you need to understand something as provocative as who owns the past, or something as mundane as whether a museum can sell a work of art to fix the roof, Law, Ethics and the Visual Arts provides the information you need. It combines unassailable scholarship with a deeply humanistic approach, recognizing that law and art each "impose a measure of order on the disorder of experience without stifling the underlying diversity, spontaneity, and disarray" (Paul Freund).« less