Colorado Passes Law Giving Artists New Legal And Fiscal Tools The Art Newspaper International Art News And Events

Colorado has enacted a new legal framework aimed at artists who want to organize their work more like a business without surrendering control over it. Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 133 into law on June 2, creating a new type of limited liability company in the state called an Artist Company.

The measure, which passed the Colorado House on May 11 and the Senate on May 13, was backed in part by state senator Jeff Bridges, who said the law recognizes artists as a labor group and gives them a legal structure better suited to the realities of creative work.“This [bill] is a bold step forward to say artists are not well served by the current options for legal recognition and we want to create something that works better,” Bridges said.

The idea has been circulating beyond Colorado as well. Yancey Strickler, co-founder of Kickstarter, presented the concept of an Artist Company in a TED Talk last year. In his view, the model can function as a studio structure for individual artists, but it can also serve as a holding company for a collection, album, or creative business shared with collaborators or investors.

The law gives the structure unusual financial flexibility. Artistic work can be treated as a capital contribution rather than a generic asset, allowing its value to appear on the company's balance sheet and potentially be used for leverage, such as securing a loan. The bill defines“artistic work” broadly as a project or activity developed, created, produced, distributed, exhibited, or performed in pursuit of an artistic mission, a definition wide enough to include dancers, musicians, writers, and visual artists.

It also builds in a mechanism meant to preserve ownership. Under the statute, 51% artistic ownership is required to file articles of organization with the Secretary of State. If the company dissolves, rights to the artistic work, along with royalties and revenue, revert to the artist member who assigned, licensed, or created the work.

Patricia Ho, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and commercial litigation, said the law cannot offer the same protection as copyright or trademark because of its open-ended definition of artistic expression. Even so, she argued that the structure could help rebalance negotiations between artists and larger institutions.“There is a gross imbalance of power between an artist and a bigger institution,” Ho said.

That concern surfaced in testimony from Denver-based artist Sarah Darlene, who described how the framework could help multidisciplinary artists protect work developed over long relationships with institutions. For artists navigating museums, theaters, labels, and investors, Colorado's new law offers something relatively rare: a template that treats creative labor as both art and property, while trying to keep the two from being separated too easily.

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