Six Proactive Steps Artists Can Take to Protect their Murals
Murals have become an increasingly popular way for cities and property owners to add unique, eye-catching visuals to their buildings. To ensure that these murals are protected and can be enjoyed by future generations, artists should take proactive steps to protect their artwork. From understanding the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) to using protective mural coatings, there are a number of ways that artists and mural programs can safeguard their murals. Here are six proactive steps that artists can take to protect their murals and help ensure they last for years to come.
1. VARA and Murals
On your mural journey, it's likely that you will encounter commissions that will ask for modifications or waivers to your artist rights. The Visual Artist Rights Act of 1990 (VARA) provides limited protections for visual art by granting authors the right to prevent destruction or modification of their artwork that would hurt an artist’s reputation. For murals, VARA grants the author limited rights to preserve their work in its original condition, and any damage or modification without their consent–such as painting over it, defacing it, or covering up parts of the mural–are deemed unlawful. VARA does not prevent murals from being removed, but rather requires a property owner to notify the artist so that they can take action to remove, document, or relocate their mural (a 90 day notice is typically given to the mural's author). Simply put, VARA does not need to be waived in order for property owners to change their buildings.
VARA can be modified or waived in contracts, and it often is a requirement by sponsoring organizations. Negotiating a procedure that requires property owners to notify the artist, and if possible, retain VARA should be done with an experienced art lawyer. Nonprofit Art Law Organizations exist in most States, and they connect artists with low cost or even pro bono attorneys. Examples are the California Lawyers for the Arts (CLA), Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts (TALA), and New York's Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA).
Most importantly, maintain your relationships with property owners and/or mural programs. Ensure they have your contact information, that your contact information is easy to find online, and that your mural has permanent and legible contact information. It’s your artistic reputation and communities develop strong bonds with murals. Changes are difficult and sometimes necessary, but being proactive helps build strong connections.
2. Exploring Property Covenants and Deed Restrictions
Private restrictive covenants and deed restrictions are often used to protect historic buildings. More recently, some city-sponsored mural programs require that property owners register a time-based deed restriction that ensures a mural will remain on a building for a certain length of time. Check with your local Cultural Affairs Department or City Mural Program to see if obtaining a deed restriction is part of an approval process for creating a new mural on a private building. An example of a deed restriction can be found on the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs' Mural Art Registration guide (See page 9).
Private restrictive covenants can carry through property sales. Sometimes, property owners have historic and culturally valuable murals on their buildings and they wish to protect them beyond their ownership. A restrictive covenant should be explored with the help of an experienced real estate attorney if there are concerns of a future property sale leading to the loss of a historic mural. You can also check with an artist lawyer and your local city planner for more information.
3. Consider Painting on a Movable Substrate
Mural Cloth is the first ultra-wide mural textile designed for outdoor or indoor permanent installations. Painting on Mural Cloth allows artists to economically relocate their mural if in the future a building owner wants to change up their building. Removing a Mural Cloth mural takes no special equipment, and removed murals can be rolled up and stored or stretched and hung.
Mural Cloth is fully primed and ready to paint. Artists can paint their mural on site, or paint in the studio and install the finished mural at a later time. Simply glue Mural Cloth on a building using acrylic gel medium.
4. Coat Your Mural!
Why? Accidents happen. If your coated mural is buffed out or overpainted, it can be easily restored with minimal funds. Overpainting often happens accidentally, but a coated mural gives you the option to economically repair a mural. If your mural is uncoated, restoration is very costly.
Even if the overpainting was intentional, buildings are sold, and new building owners could turn out to be more supportive. New property owners may be interested in repairing a coated mural to its original vibrancy.
If a mural is protected with a fine art mural coating, a mural can be restored a month, a year, even decades after it has been overpainted. Coat your murals!
Find out more about our Mural Coatings
5. Digitally Conserve Your Mural
You can digitally conserve your murals by creating a photo scan of a finished artwork. A high resolution photograph of your mural can help future repairs, or even reproduce it using advanced digital printing techniques.
iPhones are an incredible tool for this. When set on raw, some iPhone Pro models can capture up to 50 MPx. So often, artists don’t properly photograph their completed murals, and you need this to copyright your work, to promote yourself, to expand your archive and portfolio, and for future repairs or conservation.
If you take photo tiles, you can stitch these images together and create a full-size digital scan of your mural. Keep an eye out for a future blog post on this where we’ll tell you how to DIY a high resolution image of your mural.
If the original is ever lost, you have the option to reproduce it with a high quality photograph. When possible, take excellent photos of your mural!
6. Register Your Mural with the Copyright Office
Once your project is done, register your mural with the US Copyright Office www.copyright.gov. The fee for a single author is $45 and the US Copyright office has streamlined the process. It’s not hard to register your public art. Make it a line item on all your budgets going forward. This is invaluable for many reasons, which we'll cover in a future post!