2023 saw a watershed moment occur in Aotearoa’s visual art market. The Resale Right for Visual Artists Act 2023 was passed into law, seeing Aotearoa align with global best practices in visual art resales in providing “the right for eligible artists and successive right holders to receive a royalty on qualifying resales of original visual artworks”. To translate the legalese: artists receive a cut whenever their work is resold. 

Finally, many artists exhaled. Visual artists in Aotearoa have been advocating for decades for resale royalties on par with global best practice while writers and musicians have been collecting royalties on their works since what feels like – in comparison – the dawn of time. 

Artist and advocate Judy Darragh (Equity for Artists; Arts Makers Aotearoa) – along with several others – has fought for artist equity for aeons. “Many of us have been trying to get equity for artists for 23 years. This has a long history”, Darragh says to me over the phone. Before the Act, it was commonplace for artists to not see a cent from multiple resales of works; ironic given that the market value of art is largely predicated upon the perceived authenticity of its authorship.

The long struggle to keep artists' rights as workers on the table paid off. On 1 December 2024 the Act came into effect, with Resale Royalties Aotearoa Toi Huarau (RRA, a not-for-profit subsidiary of Copyright Licensing New Zealand) appointed by the Ministry of Culture and Heritage to administer the royalties. The Act requires qualifying resales (artworks sold for over $2,000 NZD through a professional resale or voluntary qualifying resale after 1 December 2024) to be reported to RRA, with a royalty payment set at 5% of the resale value. 20% of that 5% goes towards the costs of RRA’s activities, and the rest goes to the artist or their successors. The scheme allows for the potential for longer-term financial stability and recognition in an art market that is precarious for artists (to say the very least) and an acknowledgement of an artwork’s ability to appreciate over time. In sum: if the market value of art rises, so too should the benefits to the creator. “I see this [the RRA] as a real win”, says Darragh. “We finally are equal with so many other countries. It shows that it is the artist who is valued, not the art.” 

Thanks a million

One year on since the Act took effect, and the RRA has recorded more than $1 million in royalties. In 2025’s third quarter alone, RRA collected over $371,400 for 168 artists in total. “This is a significant result for the Aotearoa New Zealand visual art community and also recognises the ongoing support from art market professionals and others in the industry”, comments Sam Irvine, CLNZ Chief Executive/Mana Whakahaere. 

A similar scheme has been in place in Australia since 2010 and has generated over $14 million in royalties and benefitted more than 2,700 artists (Resale Royalty, 2023).  Back in October, RRA became a provisional member of CISAC – the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. CISAC is a global creator network, with 228 member societies in over 111 countries. It represents more than 5 million creators across all artistic fields, including music, visual arts, literature, and film. Since its founding in 1926, CISAC has worked to protect the rights and promote the interests of creators worldwide. It helps collective management organisations, like RRA, ensure that creators are remunerated for their work, no matter where it’s used. 

Succession plan

RRA also serves artist estates for those passed on whose work makes qualifying resales. In 2025’s third quarter, royalties were collected for 59 successors. For artist Claudia Jowitt, Project Manager/Administrator of Arts Makers Aotearoa, registering the estate of her deceased uncle, photographer Glenn Jowitt was a whānau decision. “If he was here, I feel confident that he would be in support of the right for his work to collect a resale royalty”, Jowitt comments. “Advocating for the work he made in his lifetime and the over 35 years he dedicated to his practice, registering on his behalf for resale royalties felt like the right thing to do. 

“The [Glenn Jowitt Charitable] Trust is completely non-profit, all the work done by whānau is completely voluntary and any money generated goes straight back into keeping things afloat and keeping his archive stored safely.” 

Jowitt was involved in the development of the legislation in 2022 that saw the scheme ultimately emerge and urges artists to participate. “Anything that moves towards more sustainable futures for arts practitioners and acknowledges the capital generated from their work beyond the primary sale is a good thing.” 

Other successors are choosing to donate and assign their resale rights to community and art museums, which support local exhibitions, education programmes, and events in smaller New Zealand centres.  The result of choosing to donate resale rights means that whenever certain artworks are resold in New Zealand (or in reciprocating countries overseas), the donee will benefit from a 5% royalty.

Check your junk

While uptake from artists and successors of artist estates has been steady, there is still a gap between royalties collected and those distributed to whom they are owed. A challenge RRA faces is making contact with artists and estates owed royalties who have not yet registered their details with the RRA. In this instance, RRA’s first direct communication with an artist is likely to be when they have royalties to deliver, via the email kiaora@rra.co.nz. Some artists have thought they were facing a scam when RRA personnel reached out to them; or missed emails gone to junk via spam filters. While it isn't mandatory to sign up to RRA, it does help them get in touch with artists sooner, and artists can easily keep track of any incoming royalties via the online portal. 

Another blind spot might occur with Aotearoa artists overseas and international artists resident in New Zealand (but not citizens) – who may not realise that they are eligible to receive royalties, thanks to RRA’s reciprocal agreements with sister networks as part of CISAC. A breakdown of countries that offer reciprocal agreements with Aotearoa can be found here. It’s worth noting that some countries will only pay royalties to registered RRA members – so if you find yourself overseas, or making an international sale, being already registered will count you in and make the transaction smoother.  

A small slice of pie is still pie

But sales are slow, artists protest. No one is buying. Slumped economy. Cost-of-living crisis. All the more reason to generate passive income streams, however small, to help build financial resilience. Fill out a form now, check your email a couple of times a year and get paid every time your work is on-sold.

The minimum qualifying resale value of an artwork is $2,000, a figure that might seem out of reach for many. Jowitt impels artists to register regardless. “For artists whose work might not yet have reached the secondary market or whose current pricing falls below the $2k threshold, I still encourage them to sign up as future proofing for yourself and your career as a practitioner.”

Participating in the scheme is not just good for artists as individuals – taking part is standing in solidarity with the notion that artists as workers are valued and not to be taken for granted. Ironically, some of the art made by Darragh and another advocate for equity for artists, Dane Mitchell, falls outside of the parameters of what qualifies as visual art under the RRA scheme, which specifies original visual artwork as being one of a specific, fairly comprehensive list of artforms. It must also be “created by, or under the authority of, the artist; and either a one-off, or a limited number of copies of visual artwork made by that artist or under their authority”.

This points to a larger incentive to support the scheme – a question of equity and the worth of the labour of your peers and colleagues. “I’ve heard artists saying that there’s not enough money flowing through the art market at the moment”, Darragh comments. “But it’s about something bigger. Successful artists need to be talking about this; the advocacy needs to happen from within artistic communities and across generations.”

Some artists – or their successors – don’t want to receive royalties. They may not feel that they need it or would prefer it be passed on to another recipient or organisation. The RRA is happy to arrange for the money to go to a museum, gallery or another organisation (a charity, for example) that is significant to the artist. Alternatively, royalties can be added directly to RRA’s Cultural Fund – a new funding stream established with the express purpose of supporting sustainable careers for visual artists. The Cultural Fund presents a welcome addition to the highly competitive public funding streams already on offer. Policy for this new funding pool is now in development – so watch this space in 2026. Royalties that are unclaimed for six years or more will also be allocated to the RRA Cultural Fund, meaning any money collected by RRA but ultimately not distributed to its designated recipient will end up in another artist’s kitty instead. 

Easy access

To walk the talk and test the RRA’s promise of a smooth registration process, I signed up to their portal. While it took me a while (maybe sixty seconds) to locate the necessary digital form of identification, in all, filling out the online form took me four minutes. Four minutes. 

RRA then promised to email me a link within two to three days to confirm the registration and access the online portal. The link arrived the next day. From there I moved through to accept the agreement, and we were done. RRA also offers support for those with accessibility requests. While RRA is working on offering face-to-face registrations in 2026, for now all you need to sign up is internet access and an email address. “It is not something that requires admin or extra workload to maintain”, Jowitt says. “You register once and then RRA steps in as the administrator.” 

Writing as someone who has submitted scores of live performance returns to APRA and logged hundreds of musical works with Recorded Music NZ over the last twenty years (complete with details of dates, set lists, run-times and writer percentage break-downs), registering for RRA was akin to a cold drink on a hot afternoon.

And who knows, maybe I’ll enjoy several more at some point down the line, paid for by the royalties from a work long departed from the studio and sent forth into the wild art market of Aotearoa. To quote US artist Damien Davis in Hyperallergic late in November:

“The market will do what the market does… Artists are the pulse that keeps this world alive. You make the objects that anchor memory, the images that hold history, the ideas that shape culture long after the headlines fade… Your value does not come from the market. The market comes from you.”

Ask questions, talk about it, spend four minutes filling out the bloody form. Make sure you’re getting what you’re owed.
 

This article was created in partnership with Copyright Licensing New Zealand (CLNZ), an organisation that helps make creative rights work for all New Zealanders.