Law

Many New York artists and makers will at some point face the befuddling legal issues of intellectual property, copyright, and more. To help to answer your questions and set you on the path to being legal-savvy in your own creative work, NYPL’s Mid-Manhattan Library will present Ask the Lawyer: An Artist Career Development Lecture on Monday May 11th, at 6:30pm. This event, hosted by the Art Collection, is one in a series addressing the growing needs and concerns of New York City's independent creative workforce.

Presented in cooperation with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, legal experts Elena M. Paul, Esq. & Alexei Ormani Auld, Esq. will be on hand to cover a wide array of legal and business issues with an overview of the major legal topics affecting artists and professionals within arts organizations. The topics to be addressed include: intellectual property (copyrights primarily), contracts, entity choice and formation (including nonprofit and for profit options), and more. This will be an interactive panel, so please bring your questions!

Monday May 11, 2009
6:30 p.m. on the 6th floor

Mid-Manhattan Library
The New York Public Library
40th Street and 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10016
212-340-0871

Elevators access the 6th floor after 6pm.
All events are FREE and subject to last minute change or cancellation.

What is the future for art and ideas in an age when practically anything can be copied, pasted, downloaded, sampled, and re-imagined?

LIVE from the NYPL and WIRED Magazine kick off the Spring 2009 season on February 26th with a spirited discussion of the emerging remix culture.

→ Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy ←
February 26th, 7pm (buy tickets)
Celeste Bartos Forum
The New York Public Library
5th Avenue and 42nd Street (enter on 42nd St.)
$25 general admission and $15 library donors, seniors and students with valid identification

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Our guides through this new world—who will take us from Jefferson's Bible to André the Giant to Wikipedia—will be Lawrence Lessig, author of Remix, founder of Creative Commons, and one of the leading legal scholars on intellectual property issues in the Internet age; acclaimed street artist Shepard Fairey, whose iconic Obama "HOPE" poster was recently acquired by the National Portrait Gallery; and cultural historian Steven Johnson, whose new book, The Invention of Air, argues that remix culture has deep roots in the Enlightenment and among the American founding fathers.

Stay tuned for most posts about this event!

Shepard Fairey, often described as a street artist, first began to appear in the news for wheat pasting (adorning public spaces with the artist's own posters with a water and wheat mixture), sticker tagging, and the numerous accompanying arrests. His portrait of Barack Obama that came to symbolize the historic campaign of the president is now on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. His artwork is also in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. A retrospective of Fairey’s work opened in February 2009 at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art.

Steven Johnson is the author of The Ghost Map; Everything Bad Is Good for You; Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life; Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Cities, and Software; and Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate. He is also the founder of several influential websites, including FEED, Plastic, and, currently, outside.in. His most recent book is The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America.

Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Center for Internet and Society. He writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, and the law of cyberspace, especially as it affects copyright. Lessig was named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing "against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online." He is the author of Code v2, Free Culture, The Future of Ideas, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. His most recent book is Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy.

Photos of Shepard Fairey by Jill Greenberg and Steven Johnson by Nina Subin

This event is co-sponsored by Wired Magazine.

Buy Tickets: Smarttix or call 212-863-4444

Stay tuned for more posts!