e-flux lectures: Joan Kee, “When Art Lays Down the Law”

Join us at e-flux on Wednesday, May 22 at 7pm with art historian and former lawyer Joan Kee. In this lecture, Kee will discuss three lines of inquiry into art and law via 1) legal practice, or how the practice of law intersects with art; 2) legal theory, how legal theory might help us think through/revisit artistic questions like intention [volition/consent], collaboration [joint authorship], and what the idea of agreement might entail; and 3) the “legal imagination,” or what is not yet possible in law that artworks permit us to imagine. The lecture will be followed by a conversation with e-flux journal editor Brian Kuan Wood.

Joan Kee is Associate Professor in the History of Art at the University of Michigan, former lawyer in Hong Kong and New York, and author of numerous articles on contemporary art and law on topics such as artistic uses of police evidence, stalking and harassment, property laws and contemporary Chinese art, and artists’ rights. Her book Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post-Sixties America examines the relationship between contemporary art and the law through the lens of integrity, and how in the 1960s, artists began to engage conspicuously with legal ideas, rituals, and documents.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.