A range of personalities from the legal, art and culinary fields attended the award ceremony in Madrid on 8 June, during which the prestigious chef Andoni Luis Aduriz presented Pablo Muruaga with the award.
In his speech, Pablo Muruaga encouraged everyone to reflect on the fact that culinary creations get no legal protection. He said, “Our legal system has various utensils to protect creations: from copyright, patents, designs and utility models, to trademarks and trade secrets. Each of them cooked up by the legislature to protect a very diverse range of situations. But can any of them really help protect, for instance, Andoni’s ‘edible stones’ or the beauty of his ‘handkerchiefs’ or the provocative quality of much of his work?”
Andoni Aduriz in turn delivered a brilliant speech entitled “What cannot be seen”, in which he highlighted how important it is to protect culinary creations like we do other artistic output. “If we accept that the very human characteristic of expressing oneself through different, fully subjective, manifestations of expression is a tool that can change or educate society, we must conclude that they should be legally protected. This is the case even when the margins of that expression are subtle and – for those who observe it hesitantly – somewhat obscure”.
José María Segovia and Romana Sadurska, the Chair and Executive Vice Chair of the Professor Uría Foundation, respectively, and Agustín González, Board Trustee and Secretary of the Rodrigo Uría Meruéndano Art Law Award, all attended the ceremony.
Since its creation in 2005, the Professor Uría Foundation’s fundamental mission has been to encourage volunteering to foster, among other things, the ongoing study and development of the law to promote peaceful coexistence and as a tool to protect vulnerable segments of society. The Foundation created this award nine years ago in memory of the illustrious lawyer and patron of the arts, Rodrigo Uría Meruéndano (former Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Prado Museum [2004–07] and first Chair of the Professor Uría Foundation) to support and promote innovative legal studies regarding the art world.
