Museums Mull Public Use of Online Art Images - The New York Times

"Many museums post their collections online, but the Rijksmuseum here has taken the unusual step of offering downloads of high-resolution images at no cost, encouraging the public to copy and transform its artworks into stationery, T-shirts, tattoos, plates or even toilet paper....“We’re a public institution, and so the art and objects we have are, in a way, everyone’s property,” said [Taco Dibbits, the director of collections at the Rijksmuseum] in an interview....The Rijksmuseum has been able to put its works online more quickly because much of its collection predates Dutch copyright laws....The digitization project was financed by a million-euro ($1.29 million) grant from the national BankGiro lottery, which provides money for the arts and cultural groups....Rijksstudio is unusual among digital museum projects in that it provides online tools for manipulating, changing or clipping the images, said Jennifer Trant, a co-founder of Museums on the Web. The online studio asks people to refrain from commercial uses and sells images of an even higher resolution that are more suitable for that purpose...."