Category Archives: Museums

Images from the National Gallery, London in ARTstor

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Diego Velázquez, The Toilet of Venus ("The Rokeby Venus"), 1647-1651, National Gallery, London

Diego Velázquez, The Toilet of Venus (“The Rokeby Venus”), 1647-1651, National Gallery, London

In one of its most significant additions in recent years, ARTstor has just released images of every painting in the collection of the National Gallery, London. With works ranging from the 13th to the early 20th century, the National Gallery has one of the world’s most comprehensive collections of European painting. Among the more than 2300 images from the National Gallery now available in ARTstor are such masterpieces as Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait, Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus (left), Gainsborough’s Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, and Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières.

You can read more about the National Gallery’s collection in ARTstor here.

Getty Open Content Program

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Greek, Victorious Youth, 300-100 BCE, Getty Villa, Malibu

Greek, Victorious Youth, 300-100 BCE, Getty Villa, Malibu (Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program)

This week the J. Paul Getty Museum joins a growing list of institutions that have decided to remove all restrictions to the use of images of art works in their collections. The Getty’s Open Content Program was announced on Monday, making available an initial group of nearly 4,700 high-resolution digital images of objects from its locations in Los Angeles and Malibu, California. More images, including ones from the Getty Research Institute and the Getty Conservation Institute, will eventually also be added.

You can browse all Open Content images here, or search for particular works on the Getty’s website. A download button will appear under the thumbnail of any images that are part of the Program. You will be asked to provide some very generic information about who you are and what you’ll be using the image for (more specific information is required if you plan to publish it). But aside from that, you are generally free to use the image for any purpose, as long as you simply credit the Getty as the source of the image, as in the caption at left. And all of these images are made available free of charge. You can read more about the Getty’s Open Content Program at the following links:

The J. Paul Getty Museum holds outstanding collections of Greek and Roman antiquities, Medieval manuscripts, European paintings and drawings, decorative arts, and photographs.

Note: Please do not confuse the J. Paul Getty Museum’s Open Content images with Getty Images, a for-profit stock photo company with no connection to the Museum or any other part of the Getty Trust.

New Collections in ARTstor

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Peter Paul Rubens, Angel, 1610-1611, Flint Institute of Arts

Peter Paul Rubens, Angel, 1610-1611, Flint Institute of Arts

ARTstor has released over 50,000 new images during the month of May, including:

Art Museums in the News

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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:

LACMA’s New Collections Website

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Iranian (Safavid), Ardabil Carpet (detail), 1539-1540, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Iranian (Safavid), Ardabil Carpet (detail), 1539-1540 (Photo © Los Angeles County Museum of Art, www.lacma.org)

Two years ago, I reported that the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) had launched its Image Library, which allowed users to download images of works from its collection for any purpose. Now LACMA is expanding this service through its new collections website, which vastly increases the number of images available for download from 2,000 to 20,000. And like before, the Museum places no restrictions on your use of these images, so you are free to do whatever you want with them.

Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection at the Met

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has received a major gift in the form of Leonard Lauder’s collection of Cubist art, considered one of the greatest of its kind still in private hands. The 78 works in the Lauder Collection include 33 paintings by Pablo Picasso, 17 by Georges Braque, and 14 each by Juan Gris and Fernand Léger.

You can read the Met’s press release here, and an article about the donation in The New York Times here.

New Collections in ARTstor

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Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Loge, 1874, Courtauld Gallery, London

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La Loge, 1874, Courtauld Gallery, London

ARTstor has released a number of important new image collections recently. These include the following:

  • The Courtauld Gallery (one of London’s most renowned small museums; it’s the home to Édouard Manet’s famous A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and other masterpieces of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting)
  • IAP images from the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (the Walters has long contributed to ARTstor, but now it is making available high-resolution images of its works suitable for publication as part of the Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) program)
  • Additional images from the Indianapolis Museum of Art (over 1000 new images from the museum, some of which are also part of the IAP program)

For a more complete list of recent collection releases in ARTstor, click here.

New Image Sources: Rijksmuseum, Statens Museum for Kunst

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The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has just released Rijksstudio, its new online collection of 125,000 images. You have to register (for free) in order to do much with the site, but it does then allow you to download excellent images of works from the Rijksmuseum’s peerless collection of Dutch art. The site’s Terms and Conditions do permit personal use of its images (e.g., in a Powerpoint presentation) without requiring a fee or special permission, but for commercial or professional use (including publications), you still have to apply to the Rijksmuseum by filling out an online form.

Christen Købke, A View from Dosseringen near Sortedam Lake Looking Towards Nørrebro (detail), 1838

Christen Købke, A View from Dosseringen near Sortedam Lake Looking Towards Nørrebro (detail), 1838, Statens Museum for Kunst/National Gallery of Denmark, www.smk.dk

Not quite so new, but more generous in their terms of use, are the 158 collection highlights released earlier this year as part of a pilot project by the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark) in Copenhagen. These images are made available for download and unrestricted use under a Creative Commons license. That means all you have to do is credit the Museum and its website as your image source, and you are free to use these images for any purpose, commercial or not.

You can read more about Rijksstudio here and about the Statens Museum for Kunst’s pilot project here.

Images from the National Portrait Gallery, London

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Attributed to John Taylor, William Shakespeare, ca. 1610, National Portrait Gallery, London

Attributed to John Taylor, William Shakespeare, ca. 1610, (Photo © National Portrait Gallery, London)

The National Portrait Gallery in London joins the growing list of museums making images of the works in their collections available for academic use without charge. But please note that these terms–at least for the largest images they provide–are more restrictive than those in some recent releases (such as the LACMA Image Library or NGA Images). While there is no fee for academic or non-commercial use of their images, you must still apply to the Gallery for permission to use them. Commercial use of their images still requires both a fee and permission.

You can read the full press release below:

 

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY PROVIDES FREE IMAGE DOWNLOADS FOR ACADEMIC AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE

The National Portrait Gallery now provides free downloads of a large range of images from its Collection for academic and non-commercial projects through a new web-site facility. Over 53,000 low-resolution images will now be available free of charge to non-commercial users through a standard ‘Creative Commons’ licence and over 87,000 high-resolution images will also be available free of charge for academic use through the Gallery’s own licences.

Since 1997 over 100,000 portraits from the Gallery’s Collection, including paintings, photographs, drawings, prints and sculptures have been digitised. The Gallery was among the first UK institutions to publish images online in a searchable database, and licensing of these images has raised some £5.5 million which has been re-invested in the Gallery’s work. Digitisation of the Collection is part of realising the Gallery’s mission ‘to promote through the medium of portraits the appreciation and understanding of the men and women who have made and are making British history and culture, and … to promote the appreciation and understanding of portraiture in all media’.

The new licensing process has been automated through the Gallery’s website but each transaction is individually agreed or denied by Gallery staff, to prevent potential abuse of the system and preserve the important revenue achieved from commercial image licensing. In order to help cover the cost and to highlight the value for beneficiaries of this new facility, users are invited to donate in support of the Gallery’s work. Not all of the portraits in the Collections have yet been scanned, and some are subject to copyright restrictions, so charges and restrictions will continue to apply to accessing some images, as well as to the commercial use of all images. Funds raised by image licensing activity will continue to contribute towards further digitisation.

National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, WC2H 0HE opening hours: Saturday-Wednesday: 10am – 6pm (Gallery closure commences at 5.50pm) Late Opening: Thursday, Fridays:10am – 9pm (Gallery closure commences at 8.50pm) Recorded information: 020 7312 2463 General information: 020 7306 0055 Website: www.npg.org.uk

Guggenheim Foundation in ARTstor

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Over 750 images from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation are now available in ARTstor. The collection will eventually include about 7,000 images, with works of art at the Foundation’s five museums (including the flagship museum in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice), installation views of Guggenheim exhibitions, and architectural views of its world-famous museum buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright in Manhattan and by Frank Gehry in Bilbao, Spain. The strength of the Guggenheim’s collections is in modern art, so copyright restrictions prevent some works from being included in this release (perhaps most notably those of Picasso).

You can read ARTstor’s announcement here.