

Righted Museum - jgrahamc
http://righted-museum.tumblr.com/?

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cge
Since this is offered without comment, the following is an article about this:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2015/03/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2015/03/04/googles-quest-to-make-art-available-to-everyone-was-
foiled-by-copyright-concerns/)

Essentially, this is documenting artwork that has been blurred in Google's Art
Project because of copyright problems.

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frikk
what... is this?

~~~
mdlincoln
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2015/03/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2015/03/04/googles-quest-to-make-art-available-to-everyone-was-
foiled-by-copyright-concerns/)

A project apparently exploring how copyright claims result in selective
censoring in the Street-View-esque images of museum collections produced by
the Google Art Project.

The WaPo article actually conflates copyright and reproduction rights (I work
in a museum curatorial dept. FYI) Copyright would apply to works where
artists, or their estates, can still make copyright claims over their artworks
(although the role of fair use in reproducing images of art is evolving:
[http://www.collegeart.org/fair-use/](http://www.collegeart.org/fair-use/))

But why can older artworks that are now in the public domain still have their
images blurred out? Although the museum may have agreed to openly release
representations of the public domain works that they own, it is often the case
that museums may temporarily hang works on loan from private collectors in
their galleries. In cases like these, museums and the lenders work out loan
terms that frequently include provisions about photography. These loan
agreements supersede copyright issues. Whether or not museums should agree to
such terms is, of course, a good question.

