Panel

From 2 Live Crew to the NEA 4, law courts and legal cases have become the “new salons” for discussion of the arts and aesthetics. The arts have become the subject of repeated law cases over the last twenty-five years. Lawyers and judges increasingly determine what constitutes music and what constitutes noise in Central Park and in the subways. They pronounce on serious artistic merit and obscenity. How did law courts become the significant public venue for description of what is art and indeed, what is good art? And how is it that lawyers and judges have become the arbiters of the arts? Tonight we examine the legal system and lawyers at the intersection of art and politics.

Moderator
Leslie Prosterman, Fellow of the Vera List Center for Art and Politics

Participants
Amy Adler, NYU Law School
JSG Boggs, artist
Ronald Feldman, Ronald Feldman Gallery
Marjorie Heins, Free Expression Policy Project