2010 Art and Law
Symposium Sponsored by the faculty of law, the University of Otago and the Dunedin School of Art, Otago Polytechnic / 29 October 2010
Art and Law have long intercepted each other in human history. Images belong to groups and cultures where they act as symbols of authority, religious sentiment or marks of identification. The way they are used and by whom are often fraught with disputes over rights. Within each culture, these disputes of use are couched in different forms and contexts – custom, oral heritage, documented history, case proceedings, the established instruments of legal authority. In the twenty-first century rights over images are pulled two ways – towards the freedom of globalised appropriation and towards the restrictions imposed by copyright to protect the rights and incomes of originators and owners of a property. Artists are both more and less free.
(Image: Plaque at All Saints Church, Kedleston, Derbyshire)
