Artists Win Appeal Against National Gallery of Canada

Today, CARFAC—a non-profit corporation that is the national voice of Canada’s professional visual artists—won its appeal against the National Gallery of Canada in the Supreme Court of Canada.

The unanimous decision from a panel of judges was made just a few hours after the appeal hearing began this morning.

“It’s fantastic,” said artist and CARFAC member Karl Beveridge, who had worked on artist-fee negotiations with the National Gallery of Canada for more than ten years. “They [the Supreme Court judges] rarely do this, but they made a decision right away.” (Typically a Supreme Court decision takes at least a few months.)

CARFAC had been appealing to get the National Gallery back to the negotiating table to create a binding collective agreement on certain kinds of artist fees. Negotiations on creating a binding collective agreement for artist fees began in 2003 in accordance with the Status of the Artist Act. But starting in 2007, the National Gallery’s legal advisers contended that certain fees were covered by the Copyright Act, which favours individual over collective negotiations, so the gallery refused to collectively negotiate certain kinds of fees—including exhibition fees, which fall in Canada under copyright.

“It’s an important, historic win for us,” Beveridge said. “The amazing thing is it includes all issues of copyright, not just exhibition right, but also reproduction right. So that will be on the table as well.”

(Reproduction rights include phenomena such as reproducing an artist’s work in a book, catalogue or other publication.)

The judges’ decision—which, pending a judges’ comments brief to come, seems to put Status of the Artist legislation above Copyright Act when it comes to collective negotiations—will also “send a signal to the rest of the country,” Beveridge noted. “It’ll set a precedent.”

more: Canadianart