The third seminar of the 2020 DOOSAN Curator Workshop was held with Director Kyungshin Park from Art Law Centre, on the subject ‘Public Copyright Laws and Contract Practices for Curators’. Copyright laws were examined in connection with the practice in order to investigate whether exhibition proposals or prefaces created by the curator in organizing the exhibition could be protected as work. This seminar took a look into copyright-related precedents that actually took place in the art world in order to introduce ways of preventing copyright infringement.

First, the seminar explored issues related to copyright laws, such as work, author, author’s moral right, and intellectual property rights, which are dealt with a in the museum practice. In particular, the discussion expanded further to include possible situations that can be confronted as a curator, such as issues related to derivative works the are produced in the digitalization of the original work, author’s moral rights which are considered important in site-specific art, and all kinds of copyright issues that can arise in the process of lending and borrowing museum collections.

Furthermore, the seminar looked into the 11 standard contracts in the art-field as revised by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism in 2019. In particular, the seminar investigated in detail the exhibition contract between artist and art museum, and exhibition contract and rental contract between independent curators and art museums. By looking at the legal expressions and major laws indicated in each clauses and articles in these contracts, the seminar offered each curator an opportunity to apply what they learned to their own situation and condition.

The seminar not only opened up to general copyright law theories that would be helpful to know in the art field, but also gave the participants a chance to learn about actual cases that occur in the real art world.