Copyright law is a crucial part of the normative framework of the artistic and art-related practices in the modern world. It facilitates the production and public accessibility of certain works of art and literature, music, moving images, etc. At the same time, it prevents the production and public accessibility of others whichmight have been just as interesting as those we got to know. Intellectual property norms imprint our ideas of authorship as well as the ontological constitution of artworks. Yet the (...) interdependencies and interferences between copyright law, aesthetic theories and artistic practices deserve a more thorough analysis. This paper presents a new approach to an institutional theory of art, analyzing the relevance of intellectual property regimes for the opening and exclusion of certain possibilities in the production, distribution and use of works of art as well as for our understanding of some fundamental aesthetic concepts. (shrink)