An impermanent high-art graffiti gallery in Queens was, for the five years since its whitewashing by a real estate developer, considered another casualty of cold-hearted capitalism. Its absence was a monument to the unwinnable war against the Man. Now the building owner who erased it has to pay $6.7 million in damages—for 45 pieces of what, until not too long ago, wouldn’t have been considered fine art at all.
A Brooklyn jury decided back in November that 5Pointz’s destruction violated the Visual Artists Rights Act, a 1990 copyright law protecting attribution and integrity. It was only this week that Judge Frederic Block backed up that protection with a staggering dollar amount, the maximum damages possible and the largest sum ever awarded for a violation of VARA—nearly $7 million in damages, for the owner Jerry Wolkoff’s crime of whitewashing his own walls. (Wolkoff, for what it’s worth, is expected appeal.)
