Are Muralists Artists? Legally, It Varies

Credit: Diego Rivera, Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees, California, available at Wikimedia Commons

By Walker Schulte Schneider

Murals, and the artists who paint them, are pillars of the art world. The story of art is one probably best told through muralists. Start at the beginning, for example: what are cave paintings if not murals? As forms of artistic expression multiplied and evolved, so too did murals. They became the main form of decoration for Egyptian tombs, Minoan palaces, and Roman villas. Fast forward to the Renaissance, when frescoes—paintings made directly onto wet plaster applied to walls and ceilings—became one of the era’s preferred mediums. Some of the most famous artworks from this period are murals: Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, and Raphael’s The School of Athens. Then, in the early twentieth century, the Mexican Muralists—Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—emerged, scandalizing and thrilling audiences by painting sweeping works of social commentary across the halls of power. Rivera's mural of Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees, first painted for a private patron now decorates walls of the all-female residence hall at the University of California. Most recently, street artists (as the name suggests) have become the latest champions of muralism: think of Banksy, Keith Haring, Lady Pink, and the Mujeres Muralistas—to name a few. And yet muralists have not been uniformly granted the same legal protections enjoyed by their fellow  artists who work on canvas, paper, or in stone.

It was not until 2020 that muralists gained some of the same federal legal protections enjoyed by other artists, when the Second Circuit legally confirmed that muralists are artists entitled to moral rights under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act (“VARA”).^[1] This decision affirmed that the rights afforded to other visual artists—i.e., the right of attribution (the right of an artist to be recognized as the author of their work) and the right of integrity (the right of an artist to prevent any deforming, mutilation, or destruction of their work)—also extend to muralists and their murals.^[2]