WYWH: Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts’ Event “Galleries 101 – Law for Visual Artists” (DC)

By Elena Kravtsoff, Esq.

In the middle of summer, on July 21, 2015, Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts’ (WALA) Visual Arts Subcommittee hosted “Galleries 101 – Law for Visual Artists,” at the Hamiltonian Gallery. WALA is a non-profit organization that supports the artistic community in the DC area by offering continued education, advocacy and legal services. The Hamiltonian Gallery, in addition to its exhibition space, boasts programs dedicated to the advancement of careers of emerging artists. Incidentally, this Gallery hosted a Center for Art Law event in DC in 2014.

The event in July, with an equal number of artists and of lawyers as guest speakers, was open to the general public and attracted many WALA members and Hamiltonian affiliates. The panelists included Cynthia Gayton, founder of the Arlington-based law firm Gayton Law, who is also experienced in the gallery business; Missy Loewe, attorney by training who is the CEO and president of Washington ArtWorks, a Maryland organization that offers classes, workshops, exhibits, and outreach programs that benefit local artists; as well as two DC-area visual artists, Luis Peralta and Jay Coleman.