Visual artists need tools and resources to protect our rights and financial security. Contracts are a solution. The Artist’s Contract website is a hub for free legal contracts for visual artists. The project is part of a larger movement to establish fairness and equity within the art world.

The Artist’s Contract project emerged in the spring of 2020 from a shared interest in artists’ resale rights among the co-founders: attorney Susan Schwartz and artist Virginia Broersma. They joined their research and began discussing the possibility of creating a contract that could help artists protect their rights and the possible future financial interests in their work. They hosted community conversations to hear directly from artists about the challenges they face and the protections they have sought for themselves and their work. What arose was a resounding desire among artists for a template for a sales contract they could use as the basis for negotiations with professional partners and clients. 

Based on the co-founders’ extensive research and community conversations, the FARE (Fair Artists’ Reserved Equity) Contract was created as a new model for past efforts in this area, such as the Projansky Deal, and in conversation with more recent work such as the Ross-Sutton Agreement. 

The FARE Contract is free to use and is adaptable, allowing each user to determine which terms are important to them and preserving their ability to negotiate according to their interests. Since writing and launching the FARE Contract, The Artist’s Contract has added two more templates to the website: a Cease and Desist Letter, and a Commission Agreement. Next up: a consignment agreement template that will be launched in the coming months. 

The Artist’s Contract project has grown to encompass education and advocacy around the use of contracts in the visual arts. Providing these free tools to artists opens the door to conversations about artists’ rights, advocating and negotiating on one’s own behalf, and the ways that the art world could move toward more fairness and equity. The Artist’s Contract website addresses many of the most common questions and roadblocks artists have identified and created a toolkit, a list of talking points, and further resources to help artists through the process of adopting the practice of using contracts.