Artists Win Appeal Against National Gallery of Canada

By Leah Sandals, Canadian Art magazine

POSTED: MAY 14, 2014

Today, CARFAC—a non-profit corporation that is the national voice of Canada’s professional visual artists—won its appeal against the National Gallery of Canada in the Supreme Court of Canada.

CARFAC had been appealing to get the National Gallery back to the negotiating table to create a binding collective agreement on certain kinds of artist fees. Negotiations on creating a binding collective agreement for artist fees began in 2003 in accordance with the Status of the Artist Act. But starting in 2007, the National Gallery’s legal advisers contended that certain fees were covered by the Copyright Act, which favours individual over collective negotiations, so the gallery refused to collectively negotiate certain kinds of fees—including exhibition fees, which fall in Canada under copyright.