making 20th century art available as part of the problem

dbear — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:00:52 +0000

I noted from the floor that 15 years ago the Museum Educational Site Licensing project had addressed many of these issues, identifying transaction costs as a major concern for example (which PLUS is now trying to address), and that in developing a subscription licensing model under AMICO it solved a part of the problem we are in danger of loosing sight of: how to make 20th century art available for educational use.

As we know, many now feel that if its "not on the web, it doesn't exist", but individually licensing works to make 20th century art available on the web costs museums more than they can afford. By combining the works that are not under artists copyright with those which are, and licnsing subscriptions to them together, museums found a way to put their 20th century works into the educational domain (paying the ARS and VAGA fees from the siubscription charges). The AMICO model, now used also by ARTStor, solves this problem reasonably well. We need to make sure as we provide "free" access to works not in copyright that we have an overall environment that supports access to works that are under artists copyright too.

David Bearman

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making 20th century art available as part of the problem