§ 61.081.Exemption When En Route to or in an Exhibition

An immunity for art on loan, and it exists to make exhibitions possible.

A court may not issue and a person may not serve any process of attachment, execution, sequestration, replevin, or distress or of any kind of seizure, levy, or sale on a work of fine art while it is en route to an exhibition or in the possession of the exhibitor or on display.

The list of process covered is exhaustive by design. "Or of any kind of seizure, levy, or sale" closes any route the named writs leave open.

The purpose is to make lending safe. A collector or a foreign museum will not send a valuable work to Texas if a creditor of the lender — or someone asserting a claim to the work — can seize it while it hangs on the wall.

Without such protection, major loan exhibitions do not happen, which is why most states and many countries have equivalents.

The period is bounded at both ends. It begins when the work is en route and ends on the earlier of six months after that date or the date the exhibition ends.

Three limits confine the immunity.

It does not apply to a work whose protection has been invoked at any other time — so the same work cannot be shielded repeatedly by moving between exhibitions.

It does not apply where theft of the work from its owner is alleged and found proven by the court. A person whose art was stolen is not barred by the exhibition.

And a court issuing process must require seven days’ notice to the exhibitor before the period ends, so the exhibitor learns of an impending seizure rather than discovering it.

"Exhibition" is defined narrowly — held under the auspices of a 501(c)(3) organisation or an institution of higher education, for a cultural, educational, or charitable purpose, and not for the exhibitor’s profit.