BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. – Broward County Commission’s Cultural Division and the South Florida Artists Association will present Issues in Public Art and Commissioning Agreements with the Associate Director of Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, Esq.  This training session will assist individual visual artists interested in applying for public art commissions, will be held on Friday, October 21, 2011, 6:30 p.m, at Full Circle Gallery 201 SW 5th Street in Fort Lauderdale.

A contract is the cornerstone of the understanding and agreement between an agency or individual commissioning a work of public art and the artist creating the work of art. Because the field of public art has grown over the last couple of decades, legal issues with public art agreements have become increasingly sophisticated and somewhat difficult to navigate. As a result, public art commissioning agreements have also become more complex. This brief talk will highlight some of the most important requirements and considerations of contracts and public art commissioning agreements.”

Muñoz Sarmiento, Esq., is currently the Associate Director for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts in New York City, where he advises and represents visual and performing artists and arts organizations. He received his BA in Art from the University of Texas-El Paso, and an MFA in Art from The California Institute of the Arts. In 1997 he was a Van Lier Fellow at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program in Studio Art, and received his J.D. from Cornell Law School. He is an Adjunct Professor of art law at Fordham Law School, and is also the Program Director and faculty of VLA’s Art & Law Residency Program.

His legal experience includes advising artists, galleries, and arts organizations on matters involving copyright, trademarks, moral rights, free speech, and artist-gallery disputes. He has recently worked on an important appeal under the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 on behalf of the Swiss installation artist Christoph Büchel in the artist’s highly-publicized dispute with the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.