Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons^™

The Visual Artists Rights Act's "Recognized Stature" Provision: A Case For Repeal, Drew Thornley

Cleveland State Law Review

Using as a case study the recent “5Pointz” litigation, a case involving visual artists’ moral-rights claims to graffiti they drew on a piece of private property in Queens, New York, this article examines the threat that Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA)’s grant to visual artists of the right “to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature” poses to common-law property and contract rights. This article advances the argument that the default legal rule should be that the rights of property owners (real or personal), including the right to destroy such properties, trump any moral rights that visual artists …