Van Haaften-Schick, Lauren E. (lev2126)

Ph.D., History of Art & Visual Studies, Cornell University, 2022

MA, History of Art & Visual Studies, Cornell University, 2017

BA, History of Art, Studio Arts, Arts Administration, Hampshire College, 2006

Lauren van Haaften-Schick holds a Ph.D. in Art History & Visual Studies from Cornell University. Her dissertation and in-progress book manuscript examine the history of artists’ rights laws and contracts in the United States through the case study of The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement (1971), a landmark controversial artwork sales agreement by conceptual art curator-dealer Seth Siegelaub. Lauren's scholarship rests at the intersection of art and law, expanding the scope of art historical scholarship and arts administration research by highlighting the ways in which legislation, policy, and legal instruments like contracts shape art, and how artists have intervened in or appropriated aspects of law to subversive and critical effect. Other core interests include the art market, the politics of patronage, and economic and labor issues in the arts. Lauren was a 2022 Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at Wesleyan University, a 2020-21 Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a 2021-22 Fellow at the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU School of Law, and a 2018-19 Doctoral Fellow at Cornell Tech. Recent solo and co-authored peer-reviewed articles have appeared in Grey Room, Panorama, The Journal of Cultural Economics, and the Oxford Handbooks in Law Online. In 2020 she co-edited the major monograph Seth Siegelaub: “Better Read Than Dead”: Writings and Interviews 1964–2013 (Koening Books and the Stichting Egress Foundation). Lauren regularly collaborates on public forums such as Transformative Futures: Blockchain and the Arts Ecosystem organized with Destinee Filmore at the Clark Art Institute in 2024, the interview series Redistribution organized with Kenneth Pietrobono at EFA Project Space in 2020, and the roundtable series Rethinking Artists’ Rights at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn in 2018. She has curated numerous exhibitions on topics such as censorship, protest, and labor rights in the arts. She serves on the board of the Stichting Egress Foundation / Estate of Seth Siegelaub, and on the College Art Association Committee on Intellectual Property. Prior to graduate study, Lauren worked in commercial galleries and arts non-profits, and co-founded two artist-run project spaces. 

PUBLICATIONS

Monograph Books

Canceled: Alternative Manifestations & Productive Failures (New York: The Center for Book Arts, 2012); 2nd revised expanded edition (Reading, PA: The Center for the Arts, Albright College, 2013). Catalogue for curated exhibition traveling 2012–14.

Co-Edited Books

Seth Siegelaub: “Better Read Than Dead,” Writings and Interviews 1964–2013, co-edited with Marja Bloem, Sara Martinetti, and Jo Melvin (London: Koenig Books; Amsterdam: Stichting Egress Foundation, 2020). Introduction co-authored with Jo Melvin.

Book Chapters

“‘What Would Happen If I…?’: Catalyzing the Los Angeles Council of Women Artists,” in Channa Horwitz, edited by Alex Bacon (New York: Circle Books; Vancouver: Contemporary Art Gallery). (Forthcoming)

“Ideal Work Conditions: Reviving Felix Gonzalez Torres’s Politics of Labor and Care,” in Ethical Materialities in Art and Moving Images, edited by Silke Panse (London: Bloomsbury Academic). (Forthcoming)

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

“Contractual Practices,” Grey Room 94 (Winter 2024): 67–72. 

“Beyond Copyright: How does Law Impact Art?,” Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art 9, no. 1 (Spring 2023). https://journalpanorama.org/article/beyond-copyright/. Co-authored with Wendy Katz. Introduction to Colloquium co-edited with Wendy Katz.

“From the Artist’s Contract to the Blockchain Ledger: New Forms of Artists’ Funding using NFTs, Fractional Equity, and Resale Royalties,” Journal of Cultural Economics. Co-authored with Amy Whitaker. (February 23, 2022).

“To Offer/To Exchange: A Conversation,” Performance Research 23, no. 6 (2018): 12–19. Edited discussion with artist Charles Simonds.

“Conceptualizing Artists’ Rights: Circulations of the Siegelaub-Projansky Agreement through Art and Law,” Oxford Handbooks Online: Law (March 2018). 

Conference Proceedings

“What is the Shape and Feel of the In-Between?,” in What Now? The Politics of Listening, edited by Anne Barlow (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2016), 34–37.  

“Cariou v. Prince: Toward a Theory of Aesthetic-Judicial Judgments,” Texas A&M Law Review 1, no. 4 (Spring 2014): 941–57. Co-authored with attorney Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento.

Exhibition Essays

“The Location of Power: Hans Haacke, ‘The Chase Advantage,’” in Evidentiary Realism, edited by Paolo Cirio (New York: Fridman Gallery; Berlin: Nome Gallery, 2017), 19–27.   

“Never a Solitary Endeavor,” in Seth Siegelaub: Beyond Conceptual Art, edited by Leontine Coelewij and Sara Martinetti (Köln: Walther König, 2016), 392.

“The Paradox of Non-Participation,” Six Degrees, The New Museum, New York (December 2014). https://www.newmuseum.org/blog/view/voice-the-paradox-of-non-participation. (Commissioned essay on curated exhibition Non-Participation, traveling 2014–16.)

“Gauging the Gray Area: Standards for Artistic Labor,” Art Practical 5 no. 4 (April 2014). Co-authored with Helena Keeffe. https://www.artpractical.com/feature/valuing-labor-in-the-arts-prompts-for-eight-workshops/. (Commissioned essay on workshop at the Arts Research Center, University of California at Berkeley.)

Other Articles and Essays

“The Recent Sale of Amy Sherald’s ‘Welfare Queen’ Symbolizes the Urgent Need for Resale Royalties and Economic Equity for Artists,” artnet.com, November 22, 2021. Co-authored with Cheryl Finley, Christian Reeder, and Amy Whitaker.

“Sign on the Dotted Line: How can artist contracts address economic injustice?,” frieze, no. 217 (March 2021): 24.

Introductory essay for The Agreement of Original Transfer of Work of Art with Resale to Benefit a Charitable Organization, edited by Joseph del Pesco, with Laurence Eisenstein, Esq. (San Francisco: Kadist Foundation, 2020). https://artistcontract.org/. (Revision of The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, Seth Siegelaub and Robert Projansky, 1971.)

“Art After Property: Kenneth Pietrobono and Charles Simonds,” C Magazine no. 133 (Spring 2017): 28–33.   

“How to Say No: Rules for (Non)Participation,” in Manual: An Anthology of the Manual, edited by Amze Emmons, R.J. Tillman, and Jason Urban (Philadelphia: Printeresting, 2014), 61–62.

Book Reviews 

“A Dream of Community in a “Paper Language”: Colby Chamberlain’s Fluxus Administration,” e-flux notes, September 11, 2024. https://www.e-flux.com/notes/626857/a-dream-of-community-in-a-paper-language-colby-chamberlain-s-fluxus-administration

“Joan Kee, Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post-Sixties America (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2019),” The Burlington Magazine 161, no. 1401 (December 2019): 1066–68.  

Exhibition Reviews

“The Aesthetics of Paperwork and Cultural Theory According to Seth Siegelaub,” Hyperallergic.com, April 14, 2016. https://hyperallergic.com/290637/the-aesthetics-of-paperwork-and-cultural-theory-according-to-seth-siegelaub/

INVITED TALKS

“Conceptual Art Facing the Law,” public seminar, Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico. August 14 and 16, 2019.

“Seth Siegelaub’s Many Circulations,” public lecture, Miércoles de SOMA, SOMA Summer, Mexico City, Mexico. August 9, 2017.

ACADEMIC CONFERENCES AND COLLOQUIUA ORGANIZED

Transformative Futures: Blockchain and the Arts Ecosystem (working title), Colloquium co-chair with Destinee Filmore, co-organized with Cheryl Finley, Amy Whitaker, Christian Reeder, and Susan de Menil. Clark Art Institute, Williams College, Williamstown, MA. Fall 2024.

PUBLIC LECTURES AND PANELS

Organizer and Moderator

Redistribution, discussion series on financial equity, abolition, reparations, and economic justice. Co-organized with Kenneth Pietrobono. Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Project Space, New York, NY. July 2020–October 2021. (Podcast)

Rethinking Artists’ Rights, public roundtable series with invited artists, historians, and lawyers, facilitated with Kenneth Pietrobono. Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY. Event topics: National Endowment for the Arts ‘decency clause’: 20 U.S.C. § 954(d)(1) (1990), April 18, 2018; The Visual Artists Rights Act: 17 U.S.C. § 106a (1990), May 15, 2018; The American Royalties Too Act of 2015: H.R. 1881, June 18, 2018.

Artists’ Resale Rights, organized with Artist’s Resale Royalty working group of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (WAGE), lecture and panel moderator, Artists’ Space Books & Talks, New York, NY. July 22, 2015.

Invited Lectures and Panels

NFTs: Putting the Fun in Non-Fungible Tokens, panelist, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO. November 10, 2021. (Online)

Seth Siegelaub: “Better Read Than Dead,” book launch talk and panel discussion, Paula Cooper Gallery, 192 Books, New York, NY. January 26, 2021. (Online)

“I never write, I just do”: Seth Siegelaub’s Writings and Interviews, book launch talk and panel discussion, Printed Matter, New York, NY. January 15, 2021. (Online)

Artist’s Contract, conversation with Alex Strada, ChaShaMa, New York, NY. March 27, 2019.

Artists’ Resale Royalties, Art Basel Miami, Sessions, Miami Beach, FL. December 4, 2016.

CURATED EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLICATIONS

The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement, special section in Seth Siegelaub: Textile Art Theory, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy. 2023. 

Non-Participation, The Luminary, St. Louis, MO (2014); The Art League Houston, Houston, TX (2015); 1er Escalón, Murcia, Spain (2016); Espacio Trapézio, Madrid, Spain (2016). Exhibition of artists’ letters refusing to participate in cultural events due to inequitable labor/economic conditions, political repression, and other reasons.

Canceled: Alternative Manifestations & Productive Failures. Full exhibition: The Center for Book Arts, New York, NY (2012); The Freedman Gallery at Albright College, Reading, PA (2013); The Oresman Gallery at Smith College, Northampton, MA (2014). Exhibition selections presented: Cookbook Dreams and Inflatable Futures, curated by Arts & Sciences Projects, Guest Spot Art Space, Baltimore, MD (2014); I MAKE ME UP: The Work of Robert Seydel and his Pupils, Harold F. Johnson Library Gallery, Hampshire College, Amherst, MA (2014); The End(s) of the Library: How Can a Digital be Gift?, project by David Horvitz, The Goethe Institut, New York, NY (2012). Works created in response to canceled exhibitions. Exhibition catalogue and revised expanded edition produced.