A couple of WOW days

I spent Thursday and Friday at an Art Law CLE in Santa Fe. It was a fascinating conference.

Speakers shared their knowledge about art world scandals, gossip, lawsuits, and personalities, as well as personal collecting preferences. I learned a ton. Most of the attorneys present started off as corporate litigators and eventually quasi-retired to do art-related cases. Most of the attendees were attorneys, but there were also gallery owners, art appraisers, and auction house people. I think I was the only law student.

Art law is basically a hybrid of business law (contracts, negotiation) and intellectual property law (copyright, trademark, licensing), with the added bonus of dealing with a very creative and eclectic group of people. I was particularly interested in the talks on how digitalization/the internet is/will affect the art world- this is an area ripe for development in the next several years.

The CLE was fantastic from a law student's point of view because I got to see a bunch of people doing wildly different things in very different environments. Kinda makes me want to move to New York and work for one of the big auction houses. Or Seattle to work for Corbis- they are doing some REALLY interesting things with licensing of art and personalities. Very very cool.

Anyway, it was a very stimulating couple of days!

I'm going to be in Austin, TX, all this week, so posting may be light.