Art For Free: Met Museum Releases Thousands Of Artwork Images For Unrestricted Use
lterrat's bookmarks 2017-02-14
Summary:
"The Met Museum announced on Feb. 7 that 375,000 high resolution images of artworks in its collection are now under the Creative Commons Zero license. This means that hundreds of thousands of artworks can now be accessed, downloaded, and used however people want without needing to ask for permission or being afraid about possible intellectual property lawsuits.
The best part is that it is all for free so anyone can easily insert the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Utagawa Kunisada, Goya, and of other famous artists in their presentations.
This is all a part of Met’s goal to make fine art more accessible to everyone, whichever part of the world they are in.
The Met Museum is not the first museum to give people open access to its collections. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Dallas Museum of Art, the Yale Art Gallery, and the Getty Museum have all taken similar steps far earlier. But what makes Met’s action noteworthy is the sheer number of works instantly made available for unrestricted access.
Anyone can just go over to the Metropolitan Museum’s website to search for images to download — just be sure to tick the check box for 'Public Domain Artworks.' If that is too broad and you can’t be bothered to look for the 'CC0' tag, you can always just choose from 20 thematic sets that the Met has arranged."