Legal Issues for Arts Organizations: A Practical Guide

Legal issues touch every aspect of organizations in the creative and cultural sectors. This book teaches non-lawyer, arts administration professionals and students how to identify and manage legal issues common to arts organizations.

Legal Issues for Arts Organizations demystifies common legal problems and helps readers to approach them proactively. With an easy-to-remember “issue-spotting” process, the book helps develop the average administrator’s “eye” for legal issues, so that the administrator knows when to do more research and when to seek out professional legal assistance. Written by a law professor and former intellectual property litigator with experience in arts policy and administration, this book provides a framework that arts professionals can use to navigate legal issues with increased confidence. It provides an overview of the American legal system, teaches a systematic process for identifying legal issues, trains administrators to read and understand contracts, gives practical advice for working with professional lawyers, and puts theory into practice with an applied learning component.

Packed with practical tips and advice, this book provides a primer that every arts administrator and every arts- and nonprofit-management student will find immediately useful.

Kristi W. Arth, J.D., M.A., is an Assistant Professor of Law at Belmont University College of Law, USA. Previously, she was a partner with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, an Am Law 200 law firm, where she practiced as an intellectual property litigator and represented record labels, visual artists, authors, and galleries, among other clients in non-arts sectors.