ABSTRACT
The ‘Fearless Girl’ statue that stands in front of the iconic ‘Charging Bull’ sculpture in Manhattan’s ‘Financial District’ has drawn attention since an investment company first installed her for International Women’s Day in 2017. The ‘Fearless Girl’ alters the context and meaning of the ‘Charging Bull’ to a symbol of gender oppression in the workplace and provokes tensions between copyright and freedom of speech. The ‘Fearless Girl’ also leads to a scene where a small girl funded by Wall Street is standing up a large bull created by an artist with his own money. This comment discusses how artists can rely on ‘moral rights’ in preventing their works from intentional distortions like the ‘Fearless Girl’ case under the Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA). With the reputational externalities and the freedom of expression theories, this comment proposes that VARA should extend to protect against objectionable contextual modification of a work of art. The clear global trend is towards greater recognition of artist’s moral rights for a broad range of protection. The protection against objectionable contextual modification also reveals unequal power relations and empowers artists in the complexities of cultural production and consumption under globalization. The contextual protection is valuable for the artist and the public interest.
Lee, Tzu-I, A Battle Between Moral Rights and Freedom of Expression: How Would Moral Rights Empower the ‘Charging Bull’ Against the ‘Fearless Girl’? (May 22, 2018), John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law, volume 17, no 4, 2018.
First posted 2022-06-06 09:00:34
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