Artists have been using law as a material for decades. This looked at it directly.

Tehching Hsieh imprisoned himself for a year in his studio. Park McArthur battled an artist residency for better wheelchair access. Mary Ellen Carroll exploited Houston's lack of zoning laws to rotate a house 180 degrees. The work of these artists was not necessarily about law. They used law as a material, a target, and a readymade. They engaged the legal medium.

Artists have been working this way for decades, perhaps centuries, but the practice is taking on a new importance. The role of the institution in the art world is changing. A handful of powerful, centralized institutions are giving way to many new ones, some of which are not art institutions at all. Artists increasingly work between these institutions — city councils, galleries, museums, fairs, donors, grant-givers, sponsors, schools — to make their work. The process of making art is becoming more entrepreneurial.

Between institutions — in the contracts, processes, codes, and norms that bind and define them — lies vast creative opportunity.

Artists often lament this shift and wonder how to hold an artistic vision while interfacing with so many actors, each with its own priorities. But the situation also exposes a range of possibilities. That is increasingly where we find law as medium.