13.05.2008 | KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststraße 69, 10117 Berlin-Mitte

The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement

Tuesday, May 13, 2008 / 8 pm

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Auguststrasse 69, 10117 Berlin-Mitte, U6 Oranienburger Tor, S1/S2/S25 Oranienburger Strasse, S5/S7/S9 Hackescher Markt

The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement was a contract drafted in 1971 by Seth Siegelaub (known as the organizer of the earliest conceptual art exhibitions in the late 1960s), together with attorney Robert Projansky, and then circulated in the art world. The contract addresses display rights, reproduction rights, and so-called resale rights. It inspired, more than two decades later, a project by Maria Eichhorn that began with her 1998 exhibition in the Kunstverein Salzburg and includes a recent collection of interviews conducted by Eichhorn between 1996 and 2005 with artists and gallerists as well as with the contract’s authors. These interviews raise questions not only about the contract and its historical context but about the experiences of those interviewed with the sale and resale of artworks, the role of collections and museums, artists’ rights, and much more. Maria Eichhorn is a visual artist living and working in Berlin (DE). Seth Siegelaub has been a curator, author, and contract maker. Born in New York (US), he lives and works in Amsterdam (NL). Daniel McClean is a practicing lawyer and occasional curator. He lives and works in London (GB).