International Association of Art (IAA) News

Leonardo, Vol. 14, No.4, p. 326, 1981 Printed in Great Britain 0024-094X/81 1040326-0 1$02.00/0 Pergamon Press Ltd. INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF ART (IAA) NEWS Dunbar Marshall-Malagola Readers interested in further information on the topics in this section should write to Mr. Dunbar Marshall-Malagola, Sec.-Gen .. fAA. Unesco. I Rue Miollis. 75015 Patis, France. A. Current Activities I. Relations of the fAA with other international organizations The term artist, widely taken to mean those working in the visual arts, is convenient when dealing with governmental institutions and with the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies. The IAA, an international non-governmental organization (NGO), also maintains close contact with similar associations dealing with, for example, industrial and graphic design, architecture, town planning, art teaching, criticism and museums, and has cosponsored symposia with about a dozen of these organizations in the past. Furthermore, the IAA uses its privileged relationships with Unesco to steer contracts and invitations to appropriate NGOs whenever opportunities arise in the planning and execution of Unesco's programme. 2. Social and economic interests of artists The European Liaison Committee for the Plastic Arts is actively pressing the Parliament of the European Economic Community to grant to visual artists advantages such as: (a) relief from Value Added Tax (VAT); (b) generalization of the Droit de Suite (royalties on profits from the resale of artworks), Droit de Monstration (royalties on artworks and on designs provided as a public amenity), Domaine Public Payant (a levy for the benefit of living visual artists and designers on commercial reproduction of their artworks of any period. Formerly, this levy benefited only authors of works or their families for a limited time; the intention now is to make this levy payable permanently to some organization working for the benefit of living artists. National associations of visual artists and of designers will often find their claims strengthened when defending their 326 members' social and economic interests by consulting their respective NGOs, which are repositories of information on the rights of artists under international law and agreements. 3. Members and regional action Associations in Kuwait and Zambia have recently become members of the IAA to give it a membership from 75 nations. To facilitate the execution of the IAA programme, regional groups have been established for South-East Asia, the European Economic Community, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and member-nations of the General Union of Arab Artists. Steps are being taken (0 establish groups in nations of Africa South of Sahara and in Latin America. B. Meetings The annual meeting of the IAA Executive Committee in 1981 was held in Havana, Cuba, and it is hoped that the 1982meeting will be held in Nigeria. The Xth IAA Congress in 1983 is tentatively scheduled to be held in Helsinki, Finland, thanks to a joint invitation extended by associations' in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The theme of the Congress is to be Art in Search of a New World Order (Contribution of Artists to a New Relationship among Nations). The theme stems from the Unesco programme aimed at fostering equity in international economic relations. Visual artists have been identified by many sociologists as being 'the mainspring of cultural life' and cultural development is deemed inseparable from other kinds of development in the nations of the world. ...