This year's Franklin Rawson Prize for Visual Arts, awarded by the Museum of Fine Arts in the province of San Juan, Argentina, was the scene of a scandalous case of plagiarism. The award, intended for artists from San Juan, was awarded to Mariana Esquivel for her painting Times of confinement Covid-19. The first acquisition prize awarded 80,000 Argentine pesos. "The will to enclose in one place all times, all times, all forms and all tastes, the idea of ​​constituting a space for all times (...) is a completely modern idea". It was the quotation of the famous French philosopher Michel Foucault with which Mariana Esquivel gave a conceptual anchor to her creation.

Shortly after the decision was known, a plagiarism complaint was made public by Nora Lezano, a historical photographer of the rock scene in Latin America.

Here the complaint of Nora Lezano. How you see it, the painting is based on a photo that is part of the album "Dutsiland", released in 2019 by the band "My Invincible Friend"

Although the photo is public, and the band is known, the little time difference between one work and the other made it necessary to quote the original work.

In her complaint, Nora Lezano stated: “I demand as the author and as part of InterArtis (@interartisfotografia), the collective management association that protects the rights of all photographers of the Argentine Republic, that the award be annulled, since it violates a right (mine) when I should protect it; the work also does not comply with the regulatory bases to be able to participate in the contest ”.

After the scandal, the jury of the Franklin Rawson Prize for Visual Arts apologized to Lezano and decided to revoke the award given to Esquivel, considering that it infringes copyright, image use, intellectual property and third party rights.

After rejecting the accusation of plagiarism and characterizing her work as a "visual appointment" or "palimpsest", Esquivel stressed that in her presentation to the contest she had announced that it was a quotation from the photograph, of which she did not know the name.She also stated that she considered her painting "something new created", because she had added elements that were not in the original photo.

The discussions between photography and painting have existed since the beginning of the relationship between these arts, which fostered the growth of each of these activities, giving rise to great works. Without the existence of photography, perhaps there would not be
there has never been the experimentation of the avant-gardes.

In recent times, the limits between these activities are increasingly blurred, digital image editing tools bring photography closer to the area of ​​classical painting.

But this is not a case of discussion of boundaries between the arts. How i said here: Plagiarismm is hiding, being surreptitious, using someone else's work to solve your own deficiencies.