LAW GROUP OFFERS LEGAL, BUSINESS SYMPOSIUM

California artists enjoy more legal rights than artists anywhere in the nation, but many don’t benefit from those rights because they don’t know about them, says Greg Victoroff, a Los Angeles entertainment and art law attorney.

To enlighten the uninformed, the Committee for the Arts of the Beverly Hills Bar Assn., Barristers is sponsoring a Visual Artists Symposium Saturday to provide artists and others with practical legal and business information.

Artists, collectors, museum and gallery officials, along with lawyers, legislators and business people, are among those set to lead panels and workshops at Beverly Hills High School from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Topics on the agenda range from artists’ contracts to the new tax laws to toxic hazards related to art materials.

“There are so many laws enacted in California in the last 5 to 10 years that artists and lawyers aren’t aware of,” said Victoroff, chairman of the nonprofit sponsoring organization’s Committee for the Arts.

For instance, he said, a 9-year-old federal copyright law--depriving artists working in certain situations of their copyrights--has been mitigated in California over the past five years by state laws providing these artists with employee benefits.

United States copyright law allows individuals or companies who employ artists, in what Victoroff called a “work made for hire” situation, to take 100% of copyright away from the artists. The recent California laws provide these artists with worker’s compensation insurance, state disability and other benefits, he said. The new laws also make employers liable for any injury suffered by an artist employed in a “work made for hire” situation.

“Still, I just got off the phone with the state Labor Commissioner’s office,” Victoroff remarked the other day. “Even they are unaware of any artists trying to obtain the benefits these newer laws are intended to give.”

Laws protecting artists’ moral rights, traditionally recognized in Europe, are also now codified in California state law under the Resale Royalties Act and the Art Preservation Act, the attorney said. And a law enacted in 1986, unique to California, requires manufacturers of art and craft materials to provide detailed warnings on labels regarding the hazards of toxic substances in those materials, he noted.

Los Angeles muralist Judith Baca, who has had first-hand experience with toxic poisoning, will speak about the issue Saturday.

Baca, who has been painting murals for 18 years, said recently that she was hospitalized for a week in 1977 after suffering such symptoms as blackouts and an irregular heartbeat caused by prolonged exposure to toxic substances contained in mural paint.

“Muralists are like house painters,” Baca said recently. “We are exposed to these paints from our heads to our toes and we sustain that kind of contact for long periods of time. What most artists don’t know is that all pigments, whether they are suspended in a water or oil emulsion, are made of similar minerals and metals that are toxic. I use large quantities of highly pigmented colors and I thought the paints I was using were harmless. After about 10 years of contact, I absorbed enough of the substances that I started manifesting symptoms.”

Others scheduled to speak in the symposium include Terry Schoonhoven, a local muralist; Alan Sieroty, the former state senator; Stanley Grinstein, co-owner of Gemini G.E.L. Fine Arts Publisher; Mark Anderson, executive director of ARTS Inc., and Romalyn Tilghman, western regional director, National Endowment for the Arts.

“Nobody likes to worry about legal problems,” Victoroff said, “and artists are traditionally unconcerned with what they perceive as petty details and legal issues. But Los Angeles has a burgeoning artists’ community and these issues are real. Nothing underscores that more than the toxic hazard issue.”

For symposium registration information, call (213) 556-1598. (Additional information in Calendar art listings.) Pre-registration is recommended.

ARCHITECT PICKED: Trustees of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art have chosen architect Robert Venturi for the seaside institution’s planned expansion.

Venturi, head of the firm Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown, is seen by architectural scholars as a founder of Post-Modernism.

“It was of extreme importance to the museum’s board (of trustees),” said museum director Hugh M. Davies in a prepared statement, “to select an architect who was especially sensitive to our spectacular coastline site, and the museum’s distinctive role in the history and cultural vitality of La Jolla and San Diego.”

The museum’s expansion plans include additional gallery space, increased storage capacity for its permanent collection, a renovation of its rear sculpture garden, an area designated for educational programs, and an expanded library, bookstore and cafe. Schematic drawings for the expansion are expected to be presented to the museum by Venturi’s firm next spring.

Most recently, Venturi was selected to design the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery in London. His other important museum commissions now in progress are the new Seattle Art Museum and the new Laguna Gloria Art museum in Austin, Tex.

OPEN CALL: Artists Equity Assn. of Greater Los Angeles has issued an open call to all professional visual artists for its upcoming exhibition at the Brand Art Center and Gallery in Glendale.

Jurors Michele Isenberg, director of Corporate Art Consultants, and Emerson Woelffer, an artist and professor at Otis/Parsons, will select works for the Aug. 8-Sept. 2 show.

To participate, artists working in all media, excluding film and video, may submit one slide with a self-addressed, stamped envelope and a resume to Anora Wohl, AEA Exhibition Chair, 1246 Euclid St., Santa Monica 90404, before June 1. There is no dimension restriction on submissions.

After sending this information, from June 3-9, artists may call Wohl at (213) 393-6000 (4-7 p.m. weekdays) for a time to take their artwork to Otis/Parsons for a June 10 presentation before the jury. Artists will be notified of acceptance within two weeks. Wohl said 50-70 artworks will be included in the exhibit.

UPCOMING: “The Art of Leonard Baskin” will be shown at the University of Judaism’s Platt Art Gallery Thursday through June 30.

Baskin, an American Jewish artist, is a sculptor, calligrapher, watercolorist, designer, engraver, illustrator, essayist and poet, “whose imagery is filled with literary, social, and religious allusions showing dazzling erudition,” says the university. He has made illustrations for a new edition of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” and for the first new Haggadah to be used by Reform Jews in 50 years.

The exhibition will include about about 50 artworks in various media. Baskin, 65, has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is represented in such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.