Moral rights
An artist's legal rights in the integrity and attribution of their work, separate from copyright ownership, which can make it unlawful to alter, mutilate, or misattribute an artwork even after it has been sold.
The defining Canadian case is Snow v. The Eaton Centre (1982): the Toronto mall tied Christmas ribbons on the necks of Michael Snow's sculpted geese, and the court ordered them removed as a violation of the work's integrity. In the United States, the Visual Artists Rights Act (1990) provides similar protection, most famously in the 5Pointz case, where a federal court awarded US$6.75 million (affirmed on appeal in 2020) after a building owner whitewashed dozens of aerosol works.
The practical lesson for anyone commissioning: moral rights don't transfer with copyright. In Canada they can be waived but never assigned, so the contract must address them explicitly. Coatings, repairs, relocation, and eventual deaccession all touch the work's integrity, and it's far better to agree on the ground rules at signing than in court.