This course will look at all of the main issues surrounding art, cultural heritage, and current contemporary user-generated culture. We will look at Holocaust-era related art crimes; the life of the artist and legal issues; museums, dealers, and collectors; First Amendment issues related to art; moral rights; indigenous cultures and cultural preservation; who owns the past within an international context; and the creation of user-generated culture in our current Internet world. This class focuses on visual arts, but in many cases applies to all cultural works, particularly in our multi-media world. The seminar will produce a collection of essays that will be published as a book, (Il)Legal Art: A Handbook. Students will each write a chapter for the book. Because of the nature of the course, students must be good a deadlines and working with others. We will potentially be working with local artists as part of the experience. Students will be graded on their paper, but also should make a commitment to make revisions to their post-graded paper as part of the book as we get further in the process of publication, even if this occurs after graduation. This may be up to a year or more in the future. While this latter time commitment is not great, it still is an integral part of the experience. IP Survey is a required pre-requisite. If you have not taken IP Survey, but feel that you have other qualifications that might benefit the class, please indicate this on your seminar application. This seminar may be taken to satisfy the upper-class writing requirement.

Semester

Fall 2018

Instructor(s)

Elizabeth Townsend Gard

Academic Area(s)

Intellectual Property & Technology

Seminars