Fine Art Registry® Columnist/Guest Author
Cindy Hill, Esq.
- Writer & Attorney
Attorney Cindy Hill has practiced law since 1988. Licensed to practice in Massachusetts and Vermont state and federal courts, the First and Second Circuits, and the U.S. Supreme Court, Attorney Hill has taught Constitutional Law and Criminal Law at several undergraduate institutions, and most recently, a course on Civil Liberties and the Patriot Act at Middlebury College. Hill’s legal work has won awards including the Vermont Law School’s prestigious "Student Inspiration Award," for being the lawyer “whose dedication to the common good most inspires confidence in the students that an individual’s ideas can shape the future of law and society.” Hill writes the Legalities column for the award winning monthly publication "Vermont Woman." She is the author of "Creative Lawyering," (Xlibris 2005, www.xlibris.com/creativelawyering.html), as well as several other books on legal matters. Also an award winning poet and fiction writer as well as a musician, fiber-artist, and art collector, Hill has a keen interest in intellectual property rights as they relate to works in many fields of creative art.
Article List
Can I paint a picture of Pierce Brosnan? Given my dubious painting skills, the practical answer is a resounding No. But let's pretend that I actually had the technical ability to paint such...
Read MoreArt Article, June 4, 2008
The owner was gazing aghast at the back of the stunning, large abstract painting he had just retrieved from the gallery where he had placed it for eighteen months on consignment. "It wasn't...
Read MoreArt Article, June 4, 2008
There is no longer that comfortable guarantee that the piece will be treated as one that has had a master's touch, but instead is shown to the masses that somehow have the need to touch it and...
Read MoreArt Article, April 25, 2008
Art appreciation is not only the joy of living with tangible expressions of human creativity; it is also the economic benefit which accrues when you keep artwork over the course of time...
Read MoreArt Article, March 10, 2008
An early-childhood educator recently sent me a question: "It is hard to find good quality educational materials for young children involving classic art. In the past I have printed images of...
Read MoreArt Article, March 8, 2008
For many of us, that word brings strong and highly varied images to mind: the somber, almost funereal pall hanging over a barn full of overall-clad men as a foreclosed farm is sold off, piece by...
Read MoreArt Article, October 12, 2007
According to reports of cruise ship passengers who have attended art auctions conducted by Park West at Sea, an affiliate of Park West Gallery, after making a successful bid on artwork at such...
Read MoreArt Article, October 5, 2007
Purchasers at Park West at Sea cruise ship art auctions receive a number of documents related to their purchases which contain critical terms and conditions all art buyers should understand...
Read MoreArt Article, September 28, 2007
Big skies, big judgment. By a March 12, 2007 ruling of the Montana Supreme Court, art authenticator Steven Seltzer was vindicated of product disparagement. He had issued his honest...
Read MoreArt Article, September 21, 2007
The police commissioner called it "unconscionable." The mayor called it "outrageous." A congressman called it "appalling." The Attorney General said it was "sinister." Obviously the light-board...
Read MoreArt Article, September 21, 2007
Courtroom trials in real life are not what they look like on television. I hate to be the one to break that news, because courtroom drama on TV is so exciting and glamorous, especially today in t...
Read MoreArt Article, September 7, 2007
When you buy a piece of real estate, you get a deed, and usually a report of a title search conducted by your attorney or a title insurance company, to show the history of the property leading up...
Read MoreArt Article, August 31, 2007
A Case Study in What Happens When the Courts Meet Stolen Art. Rare is the painter who becomes a legend in his or her own lifetime, and rarer still when such a painter is a woman. Georgia...
Read MoreArt Article, August 26, 2007
An art broker from a big city recently contacted me after seeing my Fine Art Registry column cautioning art sellers and purchasers to get clear terms in writing to protect their interests...
Read MoreArt Article, August 8, 2007
Blame it on television. Millions of Americans watch those crime shows, the ones in which earnest lab techs on a mission to protect the innocent routinely leave their hermetically sealed lab envir...
Read MoreArt Article, June 26, 2007
About 1998 I went to the Isabella Stuart Gardner museum to look at Vermeer's The Concert. Imagine my embarrassment when I found an empty spot on the wall. Somehow, I'd missed the fact...
Read MoreArt Article, May 29, 2007
Many an American kid has run, full of anticipation, into a newly plowed spring field, muddy sneakers sinking into the airy fresh-turned soil, eyes keenly tuned for that glint in the sun that spea...
Read MoreArt Article, May 22, 2007
What happens when you send an artwork, antique, or collectible off to an auction house to be sold - and the auction house then refuses to sell it? This question was recently posed by a...
Read MoreArt Article, May 9, 2007
An artist I know walked into a large chain craft store a year or two ago, and stopped dead in her tracks. There before her, laid out over and over like so many television screens on the wall of a...
Read MoreArt Article, January 18, 2007
For a person fascinated by history, few experiences surpass the feeling of touching an object hundreds or thousands of years old; to feel the weight of the stone, to be able to lift it and run...
Read MoreArt Article, January 15, 2007
The Legal Perspective was written to provide further information regarding this interchange between Ms. Teri Horton and FAR CEO Theresa Franks, following Ms. Horton's comments on the...
Read MoreArt Article, December 28, 2006
Artists often perceive of their studios as a personal space, perhaps even as a three-dimensional equivalent of a private journal where their most creative thoughts take form on canvas or in clay...
Read MoreArt Article, December 26, 2006
While 'doing art' seems like a perfectly benign activity, the components of art materials include a frightening array of potentially hazardous elements. Paint pigments can include lead, cobalt...
Read MoreArt Article, December 26, 2006
While the creation of art is usually perceived as being culturally beneficent, making art is fraught with hazards to the health of the artist and anyone else working in a studio, as well as to th...
Read MoreArt Article, December 26, 2006
An art broker is a matchmaker, connecting art owners, be they artists, collectors, or investors, with art purchasers. Like real estate brokers, art brokers do frequently get up to their elbows in...
Read MoreArt Article, December 23, 2006
It sounds like a real-life version of the fairy tale we all want to believe can be true: the $5 thrift shop find turns out to be a multi-million dollar work of fine art by a famous artist...
Read MoreArt Article, December 7, 2006
Looking for some maps at a tourist office in Amsterdam a few years back, I happened to pick up a brochure aimed at encouraging investors and entrepreneurs to place their businesses in...
Read MoreArt Article, November 19, 2006
At the far end of the economic spectrum from your neighborhood 'starving artist' who blithely toils in her garret studio, sits the business-art empires, the incorporated names that appear on...
Read MoreArt Article, November 19, 2006
In 1985, a young woman from Afghanistan stared out at us from the cover of National Geographic, her green wolf-eyes piercing into our souls in a disturbing and unforgettable manner...
Read MoreArt Article, September 29, 2006
I take a photograph of a flower. Later, I walk down a city street. A building catches my eye, designed by a famous architect. I take shots of the pigeons on the ledges, the reflections in plat...
Read MoreArt Article, September 12, 2006
You've often seen advice that you should get the terms of your sale or purchase of a piece of artwork in writing. But does just any old writing do? What is it about a piece of paper that turns it...
Read MoreArt Article, August 25, 2006
My Irish pub band has been doing pretty well, and as the unofficial booking agent/promoter/p.r. chick of the group, I've decided that we need a real logo to improve our 'branding'. I know just ex...
Read MoreArt Article, August 22, 2006
I am a victim of copyright infringement. I volunteered to create a pen-and-ink holiday card design for a non-profit organization. The year after we’d sent out the cards, I received two other...
Read MoreArt Article, August 16, 2006
Internet giant Google often changes the font and ornamentation of its name as presented above that familiar search-text-box to reflect happenings of the day: snowflakes for winter solstice, tulip...
Read MoreArt Article, August 1, 2006
Oh, how sad. I am looking at a postcard, probably circa 1930's, a lovely pastoral scene of immigrant girls tending sheep in a vale. There's a postmark on the back, and the name of a photo studio ...
Read MoreArt Article, July 12, 2006
Copyright laws strike a balance between the artist's rights and the public's interest in works that have historical significance by placing time limits on how long a copyright lasts. Once copyrig...
Read MoreArt Article, May 30, 2006
When an artist steps back from applying the final brush strokes to her painting, she surveys her work with the pride of creation and a near-parental sense of combined anxiety and possessiveness. ...
Read MoreArt Article, May 1, 2006
Fine Art Registry® Columnists |
All Articles
View Article Archives
