The Art Teacher With No Class
Across the United States and much of the northern hemisphere, children of all ages have bid summer goodbye and returned to school. If they’re fortunate enough to be in a school district that hsan’t been hit by significant budget cuts over the years, there’s a good chance that many of those students are taking an art class — they’re reading, writing, and doing arithmetic, but they’re also drawing and painting, too. And for parents, that usually means that, at the end of the semester, their kid will come home with something that you’ll put on the fridge or a wall (or in a desk drawer) — as a keepsake of their childhood and also because you want to celebrate their success.
But chances are, you’re not displaying their art because it’s a Picasso or Monet. You love what your son or daughter brought home, sure, but it’s not something destined for the Louvre or, for that matter, something anyone would buy — right?
Well, maybe someone would pony up a few bucks. At least, that’s what a Montreal-area junior high schooler teacher named Mario Perron thought.
In January of 2024, Perron gave one of his classes an assignment, per the Washington Post: “Produce an artwork in the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat.” The students were to take inspiration from Basquiat’s work but they were told not to copy the Neo-expressionist directly, stating “I am very familiar with Basquiat’s work and will return copied work, because it is considered plagiarism.” (If you’re not familiar with Basquiat, here’s one of his self-portraits.) As the Post further notes, Perron underlined the words “because it is considered plagiarism” for emphasis. Perron, it appeared, understood that it was wrong to take someone else’s creation and pass it off as your own.
Well, for academic credit, that is. For $50, maybe $100 bucks or so? That was apparently okay. Because when some of Perron’s students Googled their teacher, they found that he had his own website. And on his site was a shop through which some of his creations were for sale. Here’s what some of his products looked like.
If those creations look sophomoric, there’s a good reason for that —the drawings weren’t by Perron. They were the craft of his students. Perron was selling their work, allegedly without their permission or the permission of their parents and guardians. As CTV News Montreal reported, “One of the drawings made by a 12-year-old student [ . . . ] has been listed for $151 on at least four different websites. Her drawings and those of other fellow classmates appear on multiple items, including t-shirts sold for $55, coffee mugs for $41, and even iPhone cases, at $35 a pop.”
When the kids told their parents, many were understandably upset. And some took legal action. Per a followup CTV News report, “A pair of Quebec parents is taking legal action after their children’s art teacher allegedly listed their children’s art for sale online without their knowledge. The parents sent a letter [demanding] $350,000 in moral and punitive damages for alleged intellectual property breaches. Their demands also include a formal apology and for the art to be removed from the teacher’s website.”
The school board promised to investigate the matter and, as of the end of March, the matter was still pending. But the parents who filed the suit told the Times that they expected the matter to be handled outside of court. To date, the matter’s resolution, if any, has gone unreported. But one thing is for sure: the children’s’ artwork is no longer for sale. The online shop was disabled shortly after the parents discovered it, and the website itself followed a few days after news of the lawsuit hit. And it’s likely that Perron failed to sell any of the art anyway. As the New York Times reported: “It was not immediately clear if Mr. Perron had sold any of the items he listed, or how much money, if any, he had made.”
Today’s Bonus fact: Cuts to school and community budgets have imperiled arts programs, so in 2011, students at an Illinois high school decided to fundraise for a local arts center themselves — by subjecting their fellow classmates to an unwanted dose of Justin Bieber’s music. As ABC News explains, “[seniors Charlotte] Runzel and [Jesse] Chatz talked administrators at their Chicago-area school into letting them play Bieber’s hit song ‘Baby’ over the intercom – repeatedly, throughout the school day, until their fellow students donated enough to reach the fundraiser’s $1,000 goal.” The stunt worked: they started the campaign on a Monday and by Wednesday, had hit the four-figure mark.
From the Archives: The Kid Who Wrote on the Walls and Didn’t Get in Trouble: This is a really nice, uplifting story.