WHO OWNS WPA PRINTS?
TRANSCRIPT OF PANEL DISCUSSION HELD AT THE PRINT FAIR
NOVEMBER 4, 2000 -- page 6
Now, they allocated work during the WPA years to non-profit organizations or tax supported institutions. The concept in the law is that once you transfer title, that's a complete divestiture. The subject has very limited exceptions and, in fact, you cannot prevent someone to whom you've transferred something in the United States from preventing the transfer again to a third party. It's known as the rule against alienation. It's a rule that comes from England. It's hundreds, thousands of years old. Now, once property is transferred, I cannot sell you my painting and say you cannot sell that painting at all. Once you own it, you own it. Now, there could be some limitations such as I could have a right of first refusal. If you want to sell your painting for a certain price, I have the right to match the price. That's considered a reasonable limitation. The government has consistently claimed that none of these rules apply to them, and from my point of view, this makes no sense.
Now, let me give you some idea of the magnitude of this problem. There were about 270 artists involved in the graphic art program. There were about 12,000 impressions made, and each edition was limited to 25 to 50 copies. There were roughly 750,000 prints which were produced during the WPA Project. Now, I was curious to learn whether the artists signed something. I couldn't believe the government wouldn't have gone to the artists and said, "Here's the document you have to sign", because I would have assumed the document would have said "We own the property" or "We own the plate."
I have just been able to obtain a copy of a wonderful PhD thesis prepared by a woman named Elizabeth (Liz) Seaton, for Northwestern in June of 2000. I've spoken to her, and I said "Wasn't there a letter saying you've been paid X amount or this is what our terms are?" She said she hadn't been able to find anything of that sort. I urged her to look again and she found something that I'll share with you in a moment that is very relevant. But three days ago, I spoke to Riva Helfond who's 90 years old and has a very clear memory. Number one, there was no signed agreement, absolutely, and I mean she said it in very forceful terms. I asked, "Well, how did you know when to report? Was there a letter, budget?" She replied, "As far as I can remember, there was a phone call, there might have been a letter, that I can work for the WPA." I said, "What happened when you were there? Did you sign in? Were you an employee?" Well, she doesn't know if she was an employee. "Yes, I did sign in. We were paid $ 21.50 per week, which went up to $ 23 shortly thereafter" and she added "Of course, we could live on that at that time."
She recalls she was entitled to keep 3 to 5 prints. Now, this is relevant only because ownership deals with 2 things: the physical print, and who has the copyright, which is separate from the physical print. The law, since 1976 in the United States, has made it very clear that they are two different things. You can own the painting or the print and not own the copyright. But prior to 1976, actually the statute became effective in 1978, the law's unclear as to who owned the print. The law, basically in the second circuit, which is the New York circuit, went one way as other circuits went the other way with regard to who supervised the work and so forth. Well, it was pretty clear if you were a full time employee, probably the employer owned it if you were hired to do that. So there could be a substantial issue here as to the reproduction, the copying. But the GSA has not dealt with that issue, only "we own the physical print." Because that's important even though they get the physical print, that would not stop the artist, if he owned the copyright, or someone else to whom the artist transferred the copyright, from reproducing the image.
Let me just share this with you. This is what Miss Seaton shared with me. It is odd but it's worth your hearing. This is 1939 correspondence. This is a letter written to Mr. Parker, who was Assistant to the Director of the Federal Arts Project by S. McDonald Wright, who was State Director of the Project in California. Basically, he says one of the artists wanted to reproduce one of the items on some related work for a book. He says, "I notice in your letter that you allow 3 copies of each print made by the artist to become their personal property, and they are permitted to sell them, give them away, exhibit them, or do whatever they wish with them. I did not know where you received this word, but this is not the policy of the federal office in regard to graphic arts."
Since the reproduction rights of each print are the property of the government (he doesn't state how he comes to that conclusion), it would be impossible to permit the artists to sell their copies which they received. It is our customary practice to permit artists to obtain, at their own expense, two or three prints which they may use for exhibition purposes, and to be retained by them as a record of their work." Basically, this was signed by Thomas Parker, Assistant Director of the Federal Arts Project. Further letters, and the answers [are] the same way, "No way." The artist cannot sell them, cannot do anything with them except exhibit them for their own exhibition purposes.
I think this is bureaucratic arrogance on the part of the United States government, quite honestly, and having worked for both the United States government as a lawyer and the New York State government as a lawyer many years ago, I can understand what bureaucratic arrogance is all about, and where it comes from. I agree with Mr. O'Connor, that probably the best solution is a private bill, a bill introduced in Congress. It doesn't even need to be passed, because I suspect, this is my personal view, that once a bill like this is introduced, and there's some publicity about the GSA, the GSA will backtrack, as they have started to, and not claim that all of the prints (and I have no idea of the magnitude) are their property, and they will not go after them.
Hersh Cohen: I'm not a scholar of the period. I'm not an artist. I'm just a guy who is passionate about material from the Depression and I'm not even sure why, except that we know that the Depression, along with the Civil War and World War II, were periods that shook this country to its foundations. I'm excited by the material and have been for 25 years since I first saw it.
When people ask me what I collect, I've often said, "Well, WPA art," but that really doesn't mean that every print has a WPA stamp. I think WPA art has come to be a generic term for art created during that period, and actually, the number of prints that I come across that have the stamps on them is very small in comparison to the overall output. But, I guess my job here is to talk as a collector, what is it that I like about the stuff actually created in the Federal Art Project?
To me, it never made any difference when I bought a print whether it had a stamp on it or it didn't have a stamp on it. The great majority of the material doesn't. I just respond to the image, and if it's a social realism image, that's terrific. That's what I love. There are many prints I've seen with the WPA or Federal Art Project stamp that I've passed on because they might be a landscape or something without particular social realist impact. But, I can make an analogy in finding a print with a stamp that, if you have ever collected anything of any type, for example 19th century paintings, and you found one that maybe had an exhibition label on it, that is an exciting thing.
To me, the stamp on a WPA print means that his or her peers accepted the artist in their day, which is nice. It means that somebody cared enough about the art to create it and have it documented. What I really love about the thirties' art, and what enabled me to collect it, was that there were so many terrific artists who were just forgotten because the art never sold. There was no market for it. I've referred to an artist named Maxine Sealbinder who did a print I love called Housing Wanted. How depressing is this? It was an edition of six and this was number two of six. How pessimistic must an artist have been to only make an edition of six? There are artists who have been forgotten today that I believe, as a collector, I've done a nice thing by collecting their material and showing it whenever possible. Artists like Don Rico, Kalman Kubinyi, Dayton Branfield or Paul Weller, these are wonderful artists whose work is basically out of sight and out of mind, and yet, it's a terrific body of work.
It will all wind up in a public collection some day, but I believe my love and collecting of the WPA-type material does a service. I consider it something good that I've collected WPA material and put together works that other people can look at, that they might not have been able to do otherwise.
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