“Art” A Brief Retrospective on the Legal Term

Michelle Pham | Helsell Fetterman | 26th January 2018

You know there is going to be trouble when the law has to decide what is, and is not, art. “U.S. Customs officials did not see a bird in Constantin Brancusi’s Bird in Space and refused to exempt it as a work of art when it arrived at New York Harbor in October 1926. Instead, they classified it as a “kitchen utensil” and imposed a standard 40 percent tariff on the sale price.”

This piece originally appeared in The SciTech Lawyer and has been made available with the kind permission of the author