Email: melber917@gmail.com
Jonathan Melber is the co-author, with Heather Darcy Bhandari, of ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (And Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career (Free Press), a business and legal guide for visual artists. He is the director of business development at art e-commerce startup 20x200, an instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and a board member of NURTUREart, a non-profit organization that supports emerging artists.
Before writing ART/WORK, Jonathan practiced law at a prominent arts-and-entertainment firm in New York, representing creative individuals and companies and editing the firm's Intellectual Property newsletter. He spent several years litigating for artists on behalf of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and received a Pro Bono Award for Outstanding Service from The Legal Aid Society in 2006.
After graduating from Brown University with a degree in philosophy, Jonathan won a year-long Arnold Fellowship to study the culture and cuisine of North African Sephardic communities in France. He received his JD from New York University School of Law, where he was an editor of the Law Review.
Visual artist Bonnie Collura got into a major international show because of a conversation that began on her Facebook profile, and now, thanks to the show’s success, a serious collector wants to buy her drawings. Tyler Oyer just began his career as a sculptor and...
Posted January 21, 2010 | 04:10:14 (EST)
When it comes to progressive, public-friendly copyright policies, few art museums can match The Brooklyn Museum. In 2004, it was the first art museum to adopt a Creative Commons license, allowing any non-commercial copying of any image in which the museum holds the copyright. In 2008, it was...
Posted September 30, 2009 | 16:59:14 (EST)
President Obama just appointed Victoria A. Espinel to be the first U.S. copyright czar. The position sounds like one more unnecessary addition to Washington bureaucracy (and it probably will be), but Espinel actually has a real opportunity to help fix our profoundly broken copyright laws, which--rather than fostering...
Posted July 14, 2009 | 10:11:16 (EST)
Mannie Garcia, the photographer who took the famous photograph that Shepard Fairey used to make his "Hope" poster, has officially jumped in the fray.
When the AP first threatened Fairey with legal action in February, it was not at all clear that the...
Posted June 24, 2009 | 16:09:49 (EST)
Last night, over 1800 people flooded the old Dia Art Foundation building in Chelsea, now the home of X-Initiative, for the opening of No Soul For Sale. Originally conceived by art-world jester Maurizio Cattelan, it is a sort of anti-art-fair fair showcasing...
Posted June 15, 2009 | 01:37:21 (EST)
The New York Foundation for the Arts just posted the video (here and below) of my seminar at the annual Business of Art Conference, held last month in New York City. In the video, I explain two important ways to keep track of your art and...
Posted May 19, 2009 | 04:49:06 (EST)
"Nearly 6 million people make their living in the nonprofit arts industry," First Lady Michelle Obama reminded everyone yesterday during her remarks at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she cut the ribbon for the re-opening of the American Wing. "Arts and cultural activities," she continued, "contribute more...
Posted April 22, 2009 | 17:09:44 (EST)
"A lot of people in the art world just hate his guts," said director Michael Sladek about Mark Kostabi, the one-time darling of the New York art scene whose meteoric rise in the early 80's was almost as rapid as his total collapse a decade later. Kostabi's recent attempts to...
Posted March 25, 2009 | 01:08:47 (EST)
This post is based on the book ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (And Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career, by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber, which arrives in bookstores this week.
In the course of researching ART/WORK, we interviewed 100 arts professionals...
Posted March 12, 2009 | 11:31:14 (EST)
The AP shot back at Shepard Fairey yesterday, filing counterclaims alleging that Fairey's HOPE poster, which he created based on a photograph by Mannie Garcia, was a "willful and blatant violation of the The AP's copyright." Despite its melodramatic rhetoric, the AP has a weak case.
Posted March 6, 2009 | 03:14:04 (EST)
The Armory Show kicked off yesterday in New York, but signs of the cruel economy are looming (some literally) over the sprawling international art fair.
The organizers of the show, which drew over 50,000 visitors last year, say they expect more people this year,...
Posted February 27, 2009 | 00:50:13 (EST)
It looks like the Obamas are going to put modern and contemporary art up in the White House. This is great news.
As I wrote here a few weeks ago, it is long overdue for the White House to bring its art collection into...
Posted February 19, 2009 | 00:38:54 (EST)
The ongoing battle over the Obama HOPE poster makes for a perfect lesson on what "fair use" is. And now Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) is getting a lesson on what "fair use" isn't: his chest-beating, stimulus-opposing, victory-proclaiming video set to the tune of Aerosmith's "Back...
Posted February 8, 2009 | 22:36:52 (EST)
A few days ago, the Associated Press announced that Obama's famous HOPE poster amounts to copyright infringement. The artist behind the poster, Shepard Fairey, has never hidden the fact that he based his iconic creation on a photograph he found through Google. The AP thinks it owns the...
Posted February 2, 2009 | 15:44:00 (EST)
Obama hasn't had time to redecorate the oval office yet, though he recently signaled his intention to get rid of those decorative plates.
Whenever he does get around to hanging art in his new house, he should go contemporary--that is, pick work made by living...

Posted August 3, 2010 | 22:28:54 (EST)