Chicago's public sculpture can't be photographed by the public

Chicago spent $270 million on its Millennium Park, placing a big public sculpture by Anish Kapoor in the middle of it, bought with public money. Woe betide any member of the public who tries to photograph this sculpture, though: it's a copyrighted sculpture and Chicago is spending even more money policing Chicagoans who try to photograph it and make a record of what their tax-dollars bought.

If I were them, I'd ask for my money back. What kind of jerk sculptor sells the city a piece of public art for a public park and then demands that no one take pictures of it? Christ, they should run this guy out of town on a rail and melt the goddamned sculpture down for scrap. Then they should fire the politician who signed a purchase contract that reserved the photographic rights and run him out of town on the same rail. Between the artist's greed and the procurement officer's malfeasance, this is about the vilest display of human venality I've heard of all day.

The copyrights for the enhancements in Millennium Park are owned by the artist who created them. As such, anyone reproducing the works, especially for commercial purposes, needs the permission of that artist.

Link (via Electrolite)

Update: Brian McCartney sez, "Just a note, the piece was not publicly paid for, it was a gift from SBC Communcations. Not that it matters, it's still totally bogus." Too right -- the public are still paying for this, not just in upkeep, but in the tax-break to SBC, in the maintenance of the object, in the policing to stop photogs, and most of all in the cost to the public nature of its space that comes from having an unphotographable object splatted right in the middle of an otherwise very nice park.

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