Re: Fine Art Reproductions

I must disagree with some of the statements below. They may reflect the writer's experience with a "well known museum in New York," but they do not reflect my museum's practice, nor that of most of the museums with which I am familiar from a professional standpoint.

On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Robert Panzer <bigbusie[_at_]aol.com> wrote:
>
> Many museums will prohibit access to public domain works to the point
> where the public can in no way take advantage of its rights.

Any museum that can raise the money opens public-access study rooms so that works in reserve can be seen and studied by interested individuals. We have three.

> For example, if you were to go to a well known musem in New York and
> ask for access to say, a pd painting from 1520, with the idea that you
> would reproduce the work onto 5000 posters, the museum would likely
> refuse you access to the original and even a transparency, regardless
> of any money you may offer.

You must be kidding. Make me an offer! We have our own commercial/publishing branch, but they often enter into co-production arrangements in situations like the one you describe.

> Why? Perhaps something might be said about the integrity of the
> art. But the reality, and it is not rare for the museum to even
> admit this, is that they do not want competition for their own
> merchandising operations, which are around 100 million per year.
> Sounds like access is being used to create a new and perpetual
> copyright. Unfair competiton is also a part of this scenario.
> Something about monopolies and antitrust rings familiar too.

See my comment, above. As an aside, it always strikes me as curious that museums are criticized for the very thing other institutions are praised for: being successful in marketing & sales.

> What about works that the artist still has copyright to. Museums will
> lend transparencies out to publishers, without prior approval from the
> artist.

An unfair generalization. We, for example, require clients to clear artist's copyright *first* before we will license them a photograph of a work in copyright. Were an artist to object, we would refuse to provide the transparency. (Just for the record, it's only happened once in the 7 years I've been handling licensing.) We provide our clients with information on how to contact artists or their agencies, whenever we have that information.

> The museum's rental/rights form will usually require the publisher
> to include the museum's copyright notice (if pushed to museum will
> say it is the copyright in the transparency.

Pushed? We require a photo credit for our photo, which I think is reasonable, but obviously instruct clients that the artist's copyright info must be properly printed.

> Will Bridgeman change this practice?). Of course, in reality, photo
> buyers at publishing houses don't readilly differentiate between a
> copyright in a photo and one in the painting. The museum's practice
> seems to deliberately confuse the copyright question. The only mention
> of the artist's copyright will be in the small legal text (few read
> this) on the back of the form that informs the publisher that any claims
> by the artist or an agent for the artist are the publisher's problem.

Our condition regarding clearing artist's copyright is on the front, in the same font size as the rest of the document.

> In the meantime, the museum charges fees, for rental and/or rights
> that leave little, if any, money left over in a budget to pay for the
> artists rights - the ones that really count.

On the rare occasions when a client tells us that the fee the artist has charged leaves him little room to pay us, we reduce our fee. Our copyright (if any) in the photograph is clearly secondary to the artist's copyright in the work of art.

> This is indeed ironic. Sounds again like unfair competition and
> monopoly. So perhaps the next move is for the artist to ask the museum
> for access to the original so he/she can make a good transparancy for
> reproduction. In the words of this former New Yorker, fagedaboutit!
> They don't do it.

Yes, they do. (What is it about New York...??) Actually, most often we make that good transparency, and provide it to the artist at cost.  

> These institutions are often ones that get special tax treatment and
> other benefits from their cities and states. They are quasi public
> institutions. Is this a situation where property and privacy rights
> should exceed the copyrights of the very people that allow a museum
> to exist in the first place, the artists?

I once attended a meeting of a local artist's organization (local here is national; we're a small country). Several members complained that people publish their works without their permission. I stood up and mentioned that we have an information center and, in my department, a database of artist contact information, and please to let us have any information that would help us or our clients to contact them. There was a general outcry of "Oh, God! We don't want all those noodniks calling us up and bothering us!" I sat down. Indeed, our information center reports that most artists refuse to provide an address or phone number. We often get the information via what I can only describe as "networking."

I should point out that we have very good working relations with the artists represented in our collection (and their heirs). I should mention, also, that in my position I advise local artists on their rights.

amalyah keshet
head of visual resources, the israel museum, jerusalem board of directors, the museum computer network chair, the mcn intellectual property special interest group akeshet[_at_]imj.org.il
<http://www.imj.org.il/> Received on Mon Apr 12 1999 - 19:01:09 GMT