CAA News Today

Ten years ago, CAA published the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts, providing our community with clear, practical guidance on invoking fair use in scholarship, teaching, artmaking, museum practice, and archival access. This groundbreaking resource emerged from extensive research funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and it has been widely endorsed by organizations across the visual arts and cultural heritage fields. The Code of Best Practices has empowered countless scholars, educators, artists, curators, and archivists to confidently make fair use of copyrighted materials in their work—advancing knowledge, creativity, and public access to visual culture.

A decade later, the landscape has shifted dramatically. New technologies, evolving institutional practices, and emerging legal questions—particularly around artificial intelligence and digital platforms—demand that we revisit and refresh this vital resource. The CAA Committee on Intellectual Property is committed to ensuring that an updated publication reflects the real-world experiences, challenges, and needs of the association’s members working across all sectors of the visual arts. Your responses to this survey will directly inform the revision process, will help the committee identify where the current Code of Best Practices has been most useful, where gaps exist, and what new guidance our community needs. Fair use remains essential to the work we do—and your participation ensures that the next iteration will serve our community as effectively as the first.

COMPLETE SURVEY NOW