Much is lost when cultural forms are understood primarily through the lens of property ownership — whether they are expressed as physical objects or digital code.
Martha Buskirk
Martha Buskirk’s new book, Is It Ours? Art, Copyright, and Public Interest, will be published by University of California Press in 2021. Follow her work here, or find her on twitter.
Posted inOpinion
How the College Art Association Bumbled Fair Use for their Conference Presenters
In preparing for the CAA’s conference this month, I was stopped in my tracks by a presenter agreement that required contributors to sign over extensive rights, made no reference to fair use, and put all liability risk on the speakers.
Posted inArt
Slavery and the Dehumanization of Modern Life
Through texts and objects, Cameron Rowland illuminates the connection between slavery and the commercial structures that define the global economy today.
Posted inArt
Cady Noland’s Pathological America
While it would be comforting to dismiss Noland’s 1980s and ’90s vision of a pathological public sphere as hopelessly dated, unfortunately the opposite is true.
Posted inArt
Subversive Color at the Rose Art Museum
WALTHAM, Mass. — To say that painting is having a moment would be ironic – since, despite periodic claims regarding its demise or return, it clearly never went very far away.
Posted inArt
Missing Jane Farver
BOSTON — The news of Jane Farver’s death on April 29 came as a complete shock.
Posted inArt
The Sad Story of Jumbo the Elephant
MEDFORD, Mass. — Poor Jumbo. In P.T. Barnum’s hands he became the most famous African elephant in the world — lure to throngs of circus visitors and unknowing shill for countless products. His outsized fame, undimmed by his premature demise, has much to tell us about the rise of a celebrity-driven entertainment economy.
Posted inArt
Bit Rot: The Limits of Conservation
Bad things can happen to almost any art. Casino impresario Steve Wynn famously stuck an elbow through his Picasso while bragging about the high price he was about to get for his trophy canvas, and a clumsy visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum managed to trip on a staircase and take out a whole row of important Chinese vases displayed on an adjacent windowsill.
Posted inArt
Marc Jancou, Cady Noland, and the Case of the Authorless Artwork
SOMERVILLE, Mass. — Ending not with a bang but a whimper, the last bit of legal wrangling in the case that pitted collector Marc Jancou against Cady Noland and Sotheby’s was quietly settled on November 11.
