On August 14 & 16 I’ll be giving public seminars on my research at the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City, at the invitation of the the fantastic curator Julio García Murillo. One of my favorite museums in the world – it’s an honor! 

Conceptual Art Facing the Law . 14.08.2019 — 16.08.2019

Cuando el arte conceptual emergió en Estados Unidos en los años sesenta, también emergieron algunos problemas: ¿Qué se intercambiaba al carecer de objeto artístico? ¿Cómo un artista y coleccionistas saben lo que se vende? Las respuestas a estas preguntas encuentran su solución material en la documentación, en algunos casos fotografías e instrucciones y, de manera más radical, en papeleo legal y administrativo –de manera primaria en certificados y contratos – diseñado para registrar el nombre y los derechos de su autor, así como las obligaciones y títulos de su propietario.

El objetivo de este seminario es examinar la experimentación legal artística durante los años sesenta y setenta en el arte conceptual norteamericano, que culminó con la escritura y distribución de The Artist’s Reserved Rights and Sale Agreement (El acuerdo de artistas para derechos reservados y venta) en 1971. La discusión se guiará a partir de investigación de archivo y curatorial, poniendo un énfasis especial a la materialidad de la llamada inmaterialidad de la obra artística, y la forma en la que éstas prácticas mimetizaron la materialidad de la administración jurídica.

Miércoles 14 y viernes 16 de agosto
11-14 horas / Arkheia

The ever impressive and generous Brian Frye invited me for an interview on his podcast Ipse Dixit yesterday, to speak about on my research on The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement. Available online here: https://shows.pippa.io/ipse-dixit/episodes/lauren-van-haaften-schick-on-the-artists-contract

It’s an impressive catalogue of interviews! Subscribe! And have a look at his recent paper with Christopher Bradley on the Agreement: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3406498

I’m at SOMA Summer again this year as an artist mentor and leading a seminar on my research. It’s also just the best place to be. 

Details on the whole summer schedule here: http://somamexico.org/es/soma-summer/program-2019-#panel5

January 24, 2019: Equity by Platform: The Artist’s Contract (1971) to Smart Contracts: In 1971 conceptual art curator-publisher Seth Siegelaub and lawyer Robert Projansky created The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, a legal contract envisioned as a standard tool enabling artists to retain ongoing property and economic rights in their sold works. In Siegelaub’s view, the efficacy of “Artist’s Contract” was ensured by its promise of seamless transactions executed automatically by virtue of its standard form. However, the Contract has been little-used and remains controversial, particularly for stipulating an artist’s resale royalty, and demanding transparency in resales. Today however, many emerging blockchain-based platforms for selling art employ smart contracts with terms similar to the Artist’s Contract. Here, resale royalties are not taboo, but are encouraged, and smart contracts are celebrated for their intrinsic automation and self enforcement – as if achieving the Artist’s Contract’s initial dream. Yet as uses of smart contracts and blockchain within the art market proliferate, we might pause to consider the criticisms and limitations of this historical precedent in order to more fully imagine the potentials of these technologies. It is only then that we can assess the implications of these platforms for equity in the art market, and their greatest contradiction: adopting tools of private law in order to effect collective good.

On March 27 I’ll be joining artist Alex Strada in conversation on her project Artist Contract. Strada’s contract is a derivative of Seth Siegelaub and Robert Projansky’s The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement from 1971. In Strada’s version, the contract’s stipulated resale royalty is not paid to the artist, but is instead designated to support purchases of works by young women artists. 

Read Strada’s Contract here.

This year at CAA I was thrilled to participate in two panels:

Letters to Lucy organized by the Archives of American art, presenting my paper “Whatever you do, do not give up the art battlefield”: Legal Activism, Contracts, and Collaboration between Seth Siegelaub and Lucy Lippard

and…

Bitcoins, Artcoins, Blockchains, Art, and Art History organized by the Art Historians of Southern California, presenting on The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement as Smart Contract

Completely exhausting and completely fun and rewarding, as it goes! 

Very pleased to see an interview between myself and Charles Simonds in the November 2018 issue of Performance Research.

Access the article on my site here

Or through the Journal website here: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2018.1533751 

For the 2018-2019 academic year I’ll be joining the great community of scholars at Cornell Tech’s Digital Life Initiative as a Doctoral Fellow. The DLI program is anchored by a seminar series that meets every Thursday from 12:30-2pm and is open to the public (advance registration needed).