About 375,000 visual artists claim to be self-employed yet many don't realize that their personal assets can be at risk. Find out how opening a corporation can help protect you.
Category - Corporate Law
Stories about business law and contracts
Artists and collectors can minimize estate taxes on artworks by employing a planning strategy and understanding the complexities involved with assessing the work's fair market value.
There are many legal aspects of running an art-related business that could be fairly characterized as less than interesting, but few topics inspire more blank stares, or glazed-over eyes, faster than insurance. Like a lot of legal topics, thinking about insurance requires that we think about negative outcomes – what happens when things go awry – and so it’s natural to want to...
In part 1, I talked about several methods for finding companies that would be the most likely to license your art for us on their products. The next step is contacting those companies. Licensing decision makers, especially those working in large companies, are inundated with people looking to speak with them about potential opportunities, so always think about how you can break through all...
Just like any other startup, opening a successful art business benefits greatly from knowing the right people. For those creative people starting solo or small businesses, access to industry leaders, art attorneys, gallery owners, media publishers and others can help ensure their success. Unfortunately, startups as new entities in the industry, have not been around long enough to interact with...
Every business needs a contract at one time or another. They are everywhere. Whether you are a struggling artist, world renowned photographer or a gallery owner, you will be inundated with contracts from art dealers, agents, exhibitors, publishers, ad agencies, museums as well as non-art industry members like landlords and contractors. If a contract is supposed to make...
In part 1, we looked at some general negotiating strategies. In part 2, we will look at questions you should be asking in any contract negotiation as well as reviewing provisions that you will likely see in your contract. For this discussion, let’s again assume that you are an artist negotiating gallery representation. As I discussed in part 1, make sure you know what you want before...
An artist has her first show in a New York gallery, an author is commissioned to create a photography book, a set designer has been asked to work on her first play; after the initial excitement ends, they realize with mounting trepidation, that they must enter into contract negotiations and have no idea what to do. The artists are entering into agreements that include terms and concepts they do...
Last year, New York City police officers were told that if they see any topless woman in public, they were not to arrest them. If crowds form, just disperse them in an orderly fashion. To test how police would react to that directive, photographer Allen Henson began taking photos of topless women around the city. This past August, Henson and a model climbed to the crowded observation...