Nice post title, eh? Mass MoCA is the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation a contemporary art museum in North Adams, MA. Christoph Büchell is a Swiss “installation artist.” Think very large, very avant-garde. The New York Times describes his work “dense, fraught creations, which compress masses of material and objects into historically charged labyrinthine environments through which viewers walk, climb and crawl.” Wow. Sounds just right for good old, left-leaning western Mass. Not.
VARA is the Visual Artists Rights Act, a section of the U.S. Copyright Statute that gives grants artists “moral rights.” For example, part of the law provides that the author of a “visual work” has –
the right to prevent the use of his or her name as the author of the work of visual art in the event of a distortion, mutilation, or other modification of the work which would be prejudicial to his or her honor or reputation
The First Circuit held that the Museum violated this right when, after installation of a work that called for, among other things, according to the Times, “a burnt-out fuselage of a 737 airliner” it displayed the work without the artist’s consent. … Read the full article “Mass Moca Loses to Büchel Under VARA”
I am a founder and currently Senior Counsel at the Boston law firm of Gesmer Updegrove LLP. This blog focuses on my practice areas, intellectual property and business litigation.