A Legal Perspective on the Art World with Yayoi Shionoiri

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Art-O-Log. I'm so excited to share this conversation with Yayoi Shinori. I feel like I learned so much, both professionally and personally, from my chat with Yayoi, so I hope you get just as much out of this episode as I did chatting with her. Yayoi Shinori is an art historian and art lawyer who supports artists. With over two decades' worth of experience. Her interests include artistic practice at the intersection of law and artistic practice as direct action. Yayoi has written about and presented throughout the world on legal issues related to contemporary artistic practice, copyright and AI. In the past, yayoi has served as general counsel to Artsy, associate general counsel of the Guggenheim Museum and legal advisor to Takashi Murakami. She has degrees from Harvard University, cornell Law School and Columbia University. Shinori is the VP of External Affairs and General Counsel at Powerhouse Arts and serves as a board director to the Asia Art Archive in America. Yayoi, welcome to the Artilogue.

Hi Madison, how are you doing? I'm good, thanks. How are you Good, thank you. You are finding me in Brooklyn on a Monday morning. I'm feeling super energetic and excited to be here. Great me too. How would you describe your job? Yeah, so thanks for that. So I am an art lawyer, and when I introduce myself in terms of my career, I say something like, oh, I'm a lawyer that practices at the intersection of law and artistic practice, but that more often than not, gets a bunch of blank stares. So I usually say something like I'm an art lawyer who advocates on behalf of artists and stakeholders in the art world.

Which interested you first art or law.

Definitely art, and I'm interested in particular in the line between artistic practice and action within the confines of daily life. Speaking a little nerdily about art history, I have a background in 1960s contemporary Japanese art and politics and I focused my early art historical research on an artist called Akasegawa Genpei. Akasegawa is his last name. He is no longer with us on Earth. He transcended fine artists in Japan who was tried and ultimately convicted for free speech concerns in his conceptual art practice, and so that lawsuit became known art historically now as the Model 1000 Yen Note.

And so in this case Akasegawa was tried and convicted for violating an arcane Japanese law on the books that prohibited individuals from copying currency. But what he had actually done in his practice was that he had reproduced one-sided black and white sheets of decirculated 1,000 yen notes and used those large sheets kind of like, in a Cristo-like way, to wrap other objects. So he never intended to attempt to use these decirculated reproduction notes in the stream of commerce. He was using it for his artistic practice. But he was essentially tried for the use of these notes. And in his trial a line of defense for Akasegawa really turned on what art is and whether art could have real life, sociopolitical consequences. And during the case, akasegawa's contemporaries testified by actually performing their artworks in the courtroom, almost turning the trial into a platform for performance art almost turning the trial into a platform for performance art.

That sounds incredible. That is so interesting. What do you think were the impacts to Japanese culture at that point?

with this case, did it kind of hit the news broadly or was it more of like an art world thing, because sometimes art world stuff doesn't necessarily reach that's a good question, because I think Akasegawa and his contemporaries were actually always interested in saying contemporary art, even if it could be categorized as the avant-garde, actually has direct real-life consequences. And so, before Akasegawa had been tried for this case, like a lot of him and his contemporaries were doing outdoor performance art in public spaces. Like a lot of him and his contemporaries were doing outdoor performance art in public spaces like parks and in subway stations and things like that, and so for them. I think the fact that Akasegawa was put on trial actually, I think, gave them a platform to further attempt to amplify what they were attempting to do, and the result was which is a really good question, madison At first it was only written about in art journals, of course, right In the Art Forum of Japan, there was a full issue, special issue, about Akasegawa and his trial, but, I think, more and more as his trial continued, he did manage to get a fair amount of regular press as well, and I think the reception of the public, though, remained both lukewarm and interested, right in the sense of some people were like well, is this just another, yet another example of a contemporary scare quote avant-garde artist doing something weird to get the attention of the public.

But the fact that in fact he was in fact written about in the regular press, I think, was in a sense already a little bit of a win for Akosagoa and what was actually a really difficult time for him. But forward to 2024, I still do think that the law sometimes does oh no, it doesn't overreach the US constitutional laws. At least do have this arena that talks about whether or not something is obscene or not. You have this arena that talks about whether or not something is obscene or not and whether or not somebody's free speech right to somebody's free speech is in fact impeded if there is some sort of regulation against that person, if it is determined to be obscene.

What were your earliest memories of art and how did it become a passion of yours?

So I had the privilege of being able to go to museums when I was really young, whether that was art history museums, natural history museums and the like, and encyclopedic museums as well, and it is continually a tradition that I hold dear. But my aha moment came when I was a little bit older. Little bit older so fast forward to my first year of college, and everybody in first year at that point in time was expected to take a required expository writing class. So this idea of like how does one write and how does one learn and practice the craft of writing? And in that first year seminar for expository writing one does not have a choice of theme, one just gets assigned to a professor in a section and that professor can decide, based upon either their interest or their passion or probably their expertise or accommodation of both, what they want to focus the topic of that class on. And so I got assigned to a museum ethnography specialist and we read this book called Exhibiting Cultures, and now it's one of the only books that I still remember that I read during an undergrad.

But it was really sort of about thinking about how do museums of natural history and ethnography represent specific cultures different from one's own through objects of visual and material culture, and what does that method of display and exhibition mean about the way we think about the dissemination of culture and representation as an act of collecting, the way we think about creation? Those were some of the things that we discussed and that, for me, was really an aha moment. I mean, prior to that point I had never really been that excited about dioramas in the Museum of Natural History that I got to attend. But sort of the underpinnings of thinking about that through this writing course is really, for me, what got me super excited about wanting to try to be somebody in the art world for me.

What got me super excited about wanting to try to be somebody in the art world. Yeah, was there any artifact that kind of piqued your interest when you were doing that?

So it was more actually about the idea of representing two-legged humans and the idea that we are all somehow unified in our humanity, but of course different cultures sort of developed in different ways. Like that actually, for for me was super interesting to think about. And then of course, fast forward to now in the museum world. We are so much more, I think, thoughtful about acknowledging the assumptions that we make when we exhibit objects of visual and material culture from from cultures that are not our own.

I really started to think about that when I've been back to England since 2020, because I moved away then and I've come back and have noticed that all of the museums that I grew up going to have changed the ways that they talk about things, Really challenging assumptions and especially colonial assumptions about certain pieces of art and what attitudes or assumptions that we bring to art. So I think that's been a really interesting shift.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. And for you as a museum-going audience member, but also an expert around when do you think that watershed change moment has started to percolate, do you think?

I think it must have been around 2020, or at least maybe that was when I started to think about it. I think it must have been around 2020, or at least maybe that was when I started to think about it, but I think that's when everyone started writing about it and really thinking about museums as a colonial project, for better or worse. I mean, especially with the British Museum. Right, I loved going to the British Museum as a kid and was arguing in favor of keeping the Parthenon marbles in England. And it was interesting because that summer was actually the first summer that I went to Greece for the marbles to stay in England, because how wonderful it is that we have this museum and that we should be keeping these things for everyone to see, because, whatever England being, you know, almost like the center of the world. Because I went to English school and I had that sort of mentality. And then I went to Greece and I went to a different museum that put forward an alternate version of that history. It really made me question whether I could trust museums.

to tell the truth, yeah, thanks for sharing that and, like your mention of the truth, I think is interesting, right. I've now, I think, become more and more sensitive to the fact that truths are truths to the people who tell them, but sometimes certain voices are not given the agency to declare what they think their truth is, and I think you're totally right that since 2020, it really has become more and more of a let's be very transparent about declaring whose voices have had the opportunity to talk and whose voices have not yet been included, and how do we thoughtfully attempt to rebalance that. And I think a lot of museums, as you say, madison, throughout the world are thinking about how to better do this, and I think some museums are on their path quicker than others do.

Definitely. What was your journey getting into art law?

Well, I went to law school wanting to be an art lawyer, getting into art law. Well, I went to law school wanting to be an art lawyer. Now, back in the day when I did that, there were much fewer examples of art law as a professional practice, and even now I would say there is still no tried and tested path. Right, for example, if somebody wanted to be a corporate lawyer or they wanted to be in-house working for a company as a lawyer. There are more, I would argue, tried and tested paths to do that Like do well, in law school, try to get an internship in between your first and second year in the United States during law school itself, trying to get internships and then getting an offer from these places, either at big law firms, and then eventually catapulting to an in-house job, of which maybe that was a client of the law firm. Right, there are these more tried and tested paths, but art law still there is no path, partially because there aren't that many jobs out there. But so what I ended up doing was, while I had a keen interest in wanting to be in the art world and a keen interest in saying maybe if I brought a professional skill set to the art world. It would make me more marketable. If I brought a professional skill set to the art world, it would make me more marketable. To be flatly honest, it was actually quite hard. It was not as easy as I thought my path would be. And so when I graduated from law school, one of the things that my corporate law mentors told me is that it's very important to be a good lawyer first, to be able to prove that you have a solid foundation and being a good lawyer which is close reading, interpreting and then analyzing and building arguments and advocating on behalf of the clients that you care about. And so when I was told that and the fact that I came shackled with debt in the United States from my higher education, I really took the path of least resistance.

At that point, I did practice on Wall Street for many years and I practiced both securities law and M&A in both New York and in Tokyo for many long years, working with very intelligent people, but was so far away from my dream of being an art lawyer At that point. I was so busy that it wasn't like in the evenings I had time off to go to openings or I didn't have my weekends off to go to museums, like I was so far away from all of that. So fast forward, several years after I had been a corporate lawyer in 2008, I ended up responding to a community ad newspaper ad saying that an artist was looking for a translator, and that was a Japanese artist. And that ended up becoming my first job in the art world, which had nothing to do with art law. It was just wanting to be in the art world, so I made that jump, and then from there I eventually started like doing the legal work for that artist as well, what were your career expectations leaving law school and has your experience more or less lived?

up to what you're expecting. Yeah, no thanks for that. And that I think in some ways is a follow on from from the question that you asked about how I got into art law. At the end of the day, there was no expectation of getting a job in art law. And back in the day when I went to law school in the United States, there was a big push on going to corporate. Why? Well, first of all it made good money. It helped to pay off student loans, but I think that was where sort of like the starting corral of young, junior lawyers. There was an expectation that in a place like New York, that is where the large percentage of young law school graduates would come out and get their first round of training through that kind of a job. And at that point big law firms were hiring a lot. Big big law firms often had like incoming starting classes of young law school graduates of 100 people or 150 people at a time, like a big group of people, right. So from a purely like first job perspective and a possibility of first job perspective, it was kind of a tried and tested path for people to try to do corporate work right after law school.

Now fast forward to now where obviously, the economy has gone through a number of changes.

It's not the case anymore where I think big big law firms are still hiring big, big starting classes. But at that point, when I came out, that's what people did. So I did do that and since then, I will say, after my post-Wall Street years, I've had the opportunity to work for artists, for artists' estates, for museums like the Guggenheim, for art tech startups like Artsy, and each of those things has really been a series of calculated steps and still, I would say, huge risks in terms of stability, in terms of forging my career path, in terms of thinking through, like, what is going to give me the most joy, if that's possible, versus also having a relatively financially stable opportunity in the art world, which some of those jobs are few and far in between. I think we both know this art world, which some of those jobs are few and far in between. I think we both know this. So it's a sense of like thinking through these calculated steps and trying to forge my own path because, again, as I mentioned, there is unfortunately no set path in art law?

Yeah, and I think that's the case for just art in general. There's never a set path and everyone has a different journey to getting where they are.

Which is also, I think, both heartening and exciting, because I think it means that for those of us who are trying to be hardworking and thoughtful about one's career, it is possible, there is a glimmer of hope and possibility, that it's possible to find opportunities because there is no set path right, that we can forge our own path. But the flip side of that is that you know it is, it can be a very risky, unstable proposition for sure.

How has art law changed over the course of your career?

Well, thankfully more people are interested in it.

I would say I have received so many wonderful thoughtful notes from young people who are either just starting a law school or in law school, or even young lawyers who are looking to pivot in their careers, to think about sort of the art law as a field and because of it, I will say, there are more jobs because of it. However, those jobs are not necessarily what I would consider traditional opportunities. In some ways they are sort of like they have to kind of be forged, like a person has to forge themselves into these careers. But there's like a quadrant of possibilities. On one axis there's a profit and not-for-profit axis. So on the profit side of things there's auction houses and galleries and on the non-profit side there's museums and cultural institutions. And then the other axis, in terms of that quadrant, is the production side and the supply side. So it's really sort of the artist side or the art production side, the fabrication side or like the collecting side, or the art production side, the fabrication side or like the collecting side, or the transactional side, which is collectors and institutions.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting things that are happening in art law right now?

Yeah, thanks for that.

I don't know if anyone else ever feels like the law is super exciting, but I have to say, for me, what I find exciting about the application of pre-existing legal frameworks to artistic practices is that much of the bodies of law generally throughout countries that have what is called the common law system is about precedent, this idea of building upon foundations and analyzing situations versus past applications and decisions.

So it is both this living system, but it's also antiquated and it's always a little bit behind what is happening because of this idea of building upon precedent. And so, for me, what I think is super interesting at the moment is this application of pre-existing copyright frameworks as it relates to new forms of artistic production, especially in digital art and in the realm of AI. Right, and for me, I always think about how do we protect creativity, whether that is solely made by the human hand or with the help of technological tools, and, at the same time, how do we ensure that the culture is not impeded by the laws? And so, thinking about how artists and also creators too, more generally, because we all, I think, have the ability to be creative in our daily lives how do we really understand how copyright frameworks do or do not protect us, and understanding the risks of moving forward in that world.

What have been some career highlights for you?

Yeah, thanks for that and I think for me it's really and I don't want to toot my own horn, but what brings me joy, or what sparks joy, is when legal practice can scaffold what artists want to do.

And in my over 20 year career I've been able to experience this both in New York and in Tokyo, where I really felt like we were helping the artists, pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable, and that actually helped artists to decide how they wanted to proceed. And that's not to say obviously I was saying, well, we should do this, we know it's illegal, but you should do it anyways. It's not like that but that these artists took on the risk, after understanding what those boundaries are, an attempt to push them while still remaining within that legal framework and together with the other parties who are involved in the project who actually could have been legal adversaries if things did not go very well to be able to actually create something that the artist wanted to create. So it's this combination. I think for me that art law is really the practice of art x science in a way that it's sort of very both brain like.

Can I ask which art scene interested you more, like the American art scene or the Japanese art scene?

That's a very, very good question and I'm going to give you a very lawyerly answer because I don't want either friends in either art world to be upset that I publicly came out against one or the other, but I do think they're very different and currently what I think is super exciting about the Tokyo art world is that there is a lot of people who are coming out highly trained from art schools, from this cadre of wonderful art schools. So people are highly trained and highly technical, I would say, about their craft, and what I think is interesting in the Tokyo art world is helping figure out how these young, highly skilled people find and develop their voice and ensure that they have job opportunities where they can make a living wage, whether as an artist with a capital A or, for example, in the legal oh sorry, in the saying that whether being an artist with a capital A or somebody who's actually a creator in the creative industries, whether that is a designer or a UX person or somebody who utilizes tools to create creative things. I think that is what's really interesting about the Tokyo art world that I love so much. And then what I love about the New York art world is that we talked a little bit Madison, while we were getting to know each other a little bit better.

Why I love New York so much and why I'm here. And I think New York as a city is a concept that brings people together. There's just this incredible buzz-like energy that brings people here and the idea that people learn from each other because there is so much energy that is happening around them and that I think energy remains electric in the New York art world. Obviously, there are ups and downs and there are trends that come and go and there's sort of economic trends that come and go as well in the New York art world, but I think there's always this pull that the city has that brings highly ambitious, talented people here.

Yeah, it's an excellent and very diplomatic answer. What have been some more challenging moments in your career as an art lawyer?

And how did you overcome them? Yeah, thanks so much for that. And again, I think I keep coming back to this forging one's own path, which is both super exciting because it feels like it has agency, but at the same time, to be very practical and honest, extremely scary at times where I've had to take risks, I've had to take pay cuts, I've had to think about whether a job opportunity might potentially be unstable, regardless of how well or how well I think I'm performing at that job. So it is, and I think a lot of arts jobs unfortunately are like this that and you mentioned that yourself this idea of instability. And so, for better or for worse, for art lawyers, there's no set path, and I keep reminding myself. When it's the most challenging and the most discouraging, I try to remind myself that I need to be as creative as the clients I attempt to support and that I think, in some ways, that is a mantra, that, while I don't always believe in it, I have to keep telling myself, because otherwise sometimes it's very difficult to keep going.

What advice would you have for someone interested in getting into art law?

Yeah, at the end of the day, I think you need to be a good lawyer first, and specialized legal jobs, meaning legal jobs in a specific industry in some ways requires you to be a subject matter expert in that industry, and it could be any industry that moves somebody right.

It can be blockchain, it can be space, it can be fintech, it can be pharma, it can be automotive manufacturing, like any of these industries require you to have knowledge about them in order to fully understand how to apply legal concepts to what's happening, and so I think it's that interdisciplinary subject matter expertise and legal expertise that makes somebody who is a specialist lawyer be very, very effective. And then, vis-a-vis the art piece, I don't think of my job as a job. Of course it's a job, but it's also a commitment of my job as a job. Of course it's a job, but it's also a commitment. It's a commitment to being near art, being art adjacent. It's also a life. It can be very joyous, but also really, really hard, and so I think one really needs to love it, to want to do it, and I would love to hear your thoughts, madison, about that as well.

I feel very blessed to work in an industry that I love so much. I just, I just feel very lucky. To be honest, I feel like I'm lucked out working in the art world.

I've heard some horror stories and I have none to share, so well, thanks for sharing that and I will say that you know I don't know you that well, madison, right, we're getting to know each other better and we got to work on this podcast together also. But this idea of luck, I think is interesting and I would just respond back openly that your colleagues are lucky to have you and your intelligence and your presence and your commitment, and I think that goes both ways, and I can imagine that you have worked an incredible amount to get yourself to where you are. So of course, we try to be humble and we say it is about luck, and luck means different things. I don't think you're saying luck, you fell into it, like you walked into the gallery and they gave you a job, kind of thing. But I do think it is a combination of grit, hard work, commitment packaged in luck that allows us to forge our own paths.

Yeah, no thanks for that, because I think it's important to call out that almost imposter syndrome, I think, especially among young professional women, and this is an entirely different conversation. But I'm sure that you have had your fair share of experiences of almost feeling the need to shrink yourself as a professional woman, so I think that's great that you called that out actually Something to think about.

Something to think about.

And yes, like that imposter syndrome or whatever we think that that is that imposter syndrome, it never for me, it doesn't go away and I have to acknowledge that it is there and it is something that has become part of me.

And, like I, there was a point in my career when I said, oh, I don't. I have to acknowledge that I have imposter syndrome and I don't need it or I don't want it in my life. But if it keeps coming back, I have to acknowledge that it's there and so in some ways I think it is just something in the back of my mind that I'm aware of. I don't, I try not to let it overcome me, although it most certainly still does, even now, to this day but but this idea of you know, acknowledging that I think female presenting people have to kind of feel it more. But I'm sure in some ways that it doesn't matter, like I'm sure other people feel it too. People have all had the ability to have the unfortunate ability to feel imposter syndrome and it's just a question of how does one acknowledge that and try to catapult it into a positive energy, and of course that is a very, very difficult thing and maybe a conversation again for another time.

Absolutely. Thank you, Yayoi, so much for being on the Artilogue. I have had such a great time talking to you.

Thank you, madison, and I wish you a wonderful day and I look forward to staying in touch.