Metropolitan Museum of Art Waives Copyright

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Derek Churchill

Jean-Léon Gérôme, Bashi-Bazouk, 1868-1869, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Image: CC0)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has dramatically expanded its commitment to Open Access. On Facebook Live this morning, Director and CEO Thomas P. Campbell announced that the Met would make 375,000 images of public domain artworks in its collection freely available for unrestricted use through its new Open Access Policy. This effectively supplants the Met’s earlier Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC) and Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) programs, which limited their scope to academic and non-commercial uses. The Met’s images may now be used freely for any purposes, including commercial ones. As always in questions of copyright, this policy applies only to images of artworks which are themselves in the public domain, so most modern and contemporary art is excluded.

Images that are covered by the Open Access Policy are marked on the Met’s website with a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) symbol, meaning that the Museum has waived copyright and dedicated these images to the public domain. Artstor, the Wikimedia Foundation, and Creative Commons–all of which partnered with the Met on this initiative–will also be making these images available on their own sites.

With this new policy, the Met becomes only the second American institution (after the Walters Art Museum) to adopt the generous CC0 designation for its images. It is by far the largest art museum yet to have embraced such a sweeping vision of open access.

MoMA Exhibition History Online

Posted on October 22, 2016 by Derek Churchill

Modigliani exhibition, MoMA, April 10-June 10, 1951

The Museum of Modern Art has launched an online resource documenting its complete exhibition history. Here you can find installation views, catalogues, checklists, and press releases for over 3500 exhibitions at MoMA from 1929 to the present. Needless to say, MoMA has played a central role in the history of modern and contemporary art, so this comprehensive resource should prove extremely valuable to scholars and students. You can read more in MoMA’s press release and an article in The New York Times.

New and Expanded Collections Available in Artstor

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Derek Churchill

Édouard Manet, Le Repos, ca. 1870-1871, RISD Museum, Providence

New and expanded collections in the Artstor Digital Library this spring include the following:

The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City
RISD Museum in Providence
Hofstra University Museum
Amistad Research Center at Tulane University in New Orleans
International Museum of Children’s Art in Oslo, Norway
Experimental Printmaking Institute at Lafayette College
Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS)
Additional images from Shangri La, Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art

New Collections and New Images Available in Artstor

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Derek Churchill

Shaykh Zada, Divan of Hafiz (folio 77r), ca. 1530, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA

Just this week, the Artstor Digital Library has released over 20,000 new images. New collections include the following:

Works of art in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums (Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Arthur M. Sackler Museum)
Photographs by Donald Woodman
Contemporary art installations at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh

The following collections in the Artstor Digital Library have also been expanded with additional images:

Works in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Smith College Museum of Art, and the Museum of the City of New York
20th- and 21st-century architecture in Rotterdam from ART on FILE
New media art from the Rhizome ArtBase

New Collections and New Images Available in Artstor

Posted on May 29, 2015 by Derek Churchill

Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Kimbell Art Museum Expansion, 2007-2013, Fort Worth, Texas

As the school year winds down, Artstor has been busy adding new images, particularly in the area of contemporary art and architecture. Take a look at these new and expanded collections in the Artstor Digital Library:

The first installment of contemporary art images from the D. James Dee Archive, which documents the SoHo art scene since the 1970s
Thomas McGovern’s photographs of the AIDS crisis during the 1980s and 1990s
Works by contemporary artists Wangechi Mutu and Joseph Peller
Additional examples of contemporary architecture designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Additional images–mostly of Central Park in New York–from the Foundation for Landscape Studies
The collection of Andean ceramics at UCLA’s Fowler Museum

Art Museums in the News

Posted on November 30, 2014 by Derek Churchill

Tullio Lombardo, Adam, ca. 1490-1495, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Here is a roundup of some recent stories from the museum world:

A “grand bargain” appears to have saved the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which was in danger of being sold off to help pay the massive debts of the bankrupt city of Detroit.
A Renaissance statue of Adam by the Venetian sculptor Tullio Lombardo has been put back on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art after more than a decade of conservation. The marble statue had shattered in 2002 when its pedestal buckled beneath its weight.
The Harvard Art Museums have reopened after a six-year expansion. The new complex, designed by architect Renzo Piano, unites the three museums (Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum) under a single roof.
Billionaire Jerry Perenchio is donating his collection of 19th- and 20th-century art to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
After the controversial deaccessioning of several works from its collection, the Delaware Art Museum has retired its debt and announced that it has received a number of new gifts.

Art Museums in the News

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Derek Churchill

Rembrandt, Self-Portrait in a Cap, Open-Mouthed, 1630, Morgan Library and Museum, New York

Here are a few recent stories of interest from the museum world:

The Morgan Library and Museum in New York has digitized its entire collection of Rembrandt etchings. A new online collection of about 500 images lets you explore nearly all of the prints made by Rembrandt during his lifetime. These are not Open Access images, so you cannot do whatever you want with them, but you are permitted to download them for personal, educational, or noncommercial use.
The late Richard Mellon Scaife, who died earlier this month, has left roughly half of his art collection to the Brandywine River Museum of Art in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The rest of his collection will go to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh). There are few details about the nature of the collection itself, but it is said to consist mainly of American works.

Open Access Images from the Met

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Derek Churchill

Edo culture (Court of Benin, Nigeria), Queen Mother Pendant Mask: Iyoba, 16th century, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has made more than 400,000 images of public domain works in its collection available for non-commercial use through its new Open Access for Scholarly Content (OASC) initiative. You may now download images from its website and use them for scholarly purposes–including print and online publication–without having to request permission or pay a fee. The Museum is letting users decide if their own projects qualify as “scholarly” or “non-commercial”; you can find definitions and examples on the Met’s OASC FAQ page. You may also want to consult the fine print in the Terms and Conditions for the Met’s website. Commercial use of these images is not permitted.

This is not the first time the Metropolitan Museum of Art has made its images available for free. You have been able to download large images for personal use since its website was redesigned a few years ago, and its collection has been the cornerstone of Artstor’s Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) since that program’s creation. OASC gives users yet another avenue for accessing and using the Met’s images.

New Collections in ARTstor

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Derek Churchill

Neo-Babylonian, Ishtar Gate, 604-562 BCE, Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

Here is a year-end roundup of some of the notable recent additions to the ARTstor Digital Library:

Works in the Berlin State Museums, which together form one of the world’s greatest art collections (also see ARTstor’s January 2014 update here)
The architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum in New York
Works by contemporary artist Rebecca Hackemann
Works by modern and contemporary artists of the African Diaspora from the Mott-Warsh Collection
Paintings, drawings, and sculpture in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Works in the Trout Gallery at Dickinson College

Also, images from the University of Delaware Library are now featured in the Digital Public Library of America (DLPA).

Art Museums in the News

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Derek Churchill

Diego Rivera, Detroit Industry, 1932-1933, Detroit Institute of Arts

Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry frescoes (1932-1933) are a highlight of the Detroit Institute of Arts

There have been some noteworthy stories in the museum world recently:

There are new threats to sell off pieces of the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts to help bail out the city financially. The museum — widely acknowledged as one of the finest in the United States — has faced similar challenges during past economic downturns.
The proposal for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden — the Smithsonian Institution’s museum of modern and contemporary art on the National Mall in Washington — to add an inflatable “bubble” by Diller Scofidio + Renfro to its design has apparently stalled, leading the museum’s director to resign.
It looks like the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) may be backing off from its initial plan to tear down the former home of the American Folk Art Museum. The building, designed by architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien (who were also responsible for the new Barnes Foundation building in Philadelphia), sits immediately adjacent to MoMA on West 53rd Street in Manhattan. Although praised by architectural critics since its opening in 2001, the museum building proved to be a difficult space for exhibiting art, prompting the American Folk Art Museum to sell it to MoMA and relocate a few years ago.

VRC@UD

The news blog of the Visual Resources Center at the University of Delaware

Tag Archives: New York

Metropolitan Museum of Art Waives Copyright

MoMA Exhibition History Online

New and Expanded Collections Available in Artstor

New Collections and New Images Available in Artstor

New Collections and New Images Available in Artstor

Art Museums in the News

Art Museums in the News

Open Access Images from the Met

New Collections in ARTstor

Art Museums in the News