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The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

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Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#41

Post by yarrel »

sgc wrote: post #37
malshe wrote: post #3

The link to the Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of-the-... From the link: Students, educators, and just regular art lovers might be interested to learn that we’ve released thousands of images in the public domain on the new website in an open-access format (52,438 to be exact, and growing regularly). Made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, these ima…

How is it possible to release public domain images using a CC0 license? That sounds completely unenforceable to me.

If it isn't it doesn't matter. If it is, it has the same effect as if it isn't.

Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#42

Post by veridies »

exodust wrote: post #30
jmkd wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Arts & Culture [1] aspires to this, and does a great job to a certain extent, however not at scale or in the long tail. For their own reasons institutions have resisted mass uploads to Google - despite the theoretical marriage of CC licences and G A&C non-profit contractual agreements. Art Institute Chicago has been a partner with Google since 2012 yet today we see only ~1% of their artworks on G A&C. [1] http…

Unfortunately the images cannot be downloaded from Google Art Project (original name). It's irritating having to jump over complicated hurdles to get a seamless hi-res image capture from Google Arts. It requires some messing about, but I previously managed to grab about 100 high res images, but it took ages and was not easy. They printed out nicely in the end though, so was worth it. A simple download link as seen on…

I've noticed a couple cases where Wikimedia contributors have done that legwork and extracted the original tiles; I don't know if there's any systematic effort to do so, though.

Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#43

Post by freddie_mercury »

sgc wrote: post #37
malshe wrote: post #3

The link to the Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of-the-... From the link: Students, educators, and just regular art lovers might be interested to learn that we’ve released thousands of images in the public domain on the new website in an open-access format (52,438 to be exact, and growing regularly). Made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, these ima…

How is it possible to release public domain images using a CC0 license? That sounds completely unenforceable to me.

Why would it be in the public domain?

If I take a photograph of something, don't I own the copyright to that photo? Even if it is a photo of the Mona Lisa or the Parthenon?

Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#44

Post by bdr »

sgc wrote: post #37
malshe wrote: post #3

The link to the Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of-the-... From the link: Students, educators, and just regular art lovers might be interested to learn that we’ve released thousands of images in the public domain on the new website in an open-access format (52,438 to be exact, and growing regularly). Made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, these ima…

How is it possible to release public domain images using a CC0 license? That sounds completely unenforceable to me.

The images are almost certainly in the public domain under current U.S. case law. Releasing them under CC0 is a way of saying, “just in case they aren’t in the public domain, now they effectively are.” I don’t know what you mean by unenforceable—what is there in CC0 to enforce?

Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#45

Post by kps »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #43
sgc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it possible to release public domain images using a CC0 license? That sounds completely unenforceable to me.

Why would it be in the public domain? If I take a photograph of something, don't I own the copyright to that photo? Even if it is a photo of the Mona Lisa or the Parthenon?

In the US, no. A photograph of a 2D artwork is just a copy of that artwork, and not a copyrightable original work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....

Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#46

Post by ZenPsycho »

sgc wrote: post #37
malshe wrote: post #3

The link to the Art Institute of Chicago: https://www.artic.edu/articles/713/behind-the-scenes-of-the-... From the link: Students, educators, and just regular art lovers might be interested to learn that we’ve released thousands of images in the public domain on the new website in an open-access format (52,438 to be exact, and growing regularly). Made available under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, these ima…

How is it possible to release public domain images using a CC0 license? That sounds completely unenforceable to me.

if you want to release images as public domain, you might also wish to release them with a CC0 license since I have heard (but don’t know any specific examples) that there are some situations/legal jurisdictions where use of a public domain asset might be unacceptable, but a clear license mostly equivalent to the public domain is acceptable

Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#48

Post by ZenPsycho »

kps wrote: post #45
freddie_mercury wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be in the public domain? If I take a photograph of something, don't I own the copyright to that photo? Even if it is a photo of the Mona Lisa or the Parthenon?

In the US, no. A photograph of a 2D artwork is just a copy of that artwork, and not a copyrightable original work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel... .

in Australia, yes a photographic reproduction of a 2D artwork is copyrightable. this was a point of conflict between the wikimedia foundation and a gallery i used to work for, which made a significant income from licensing photos of artworks, many of which were themselves in the public domain. this might seem unreasonable but it’s worth pointing out that producing highest quality photo reproductions of artwork is a specialist skill requiring quite expensive equipment, and there are specific choices that must be made that are on some level subjective. to put it in hacker news language- it’s a lossy operation and the photographer decides what is and is not important to keep- e.g. textural or reflective properties of the paint, vs. vividness of colours. and how exactly are you supposed to reproduce photographically the gold foil on gustav klimt’s work?

A CC0 license or some such could well be a reasonable hedge against such vagueness by making explicit the terms of use.

Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#49

Post by ZenPsycho »

faitswulff wrote: post #11
adriand wrote: post #10

This is pretty incredible. There was once a time when the only way for the average person to see a beautiful painting was to go to church. Later on this role was taken up by art galleries. Now anyone can see this stuff from the comfort of their own home. What do you think this means for the future of art galleries? What are they for ? Different ones are answering this question in different ways. Some are reinventing…

I feel like reducing historical art pieces to "beautiful images" doesn't really capture what it means when something is art. For instance, you can view reproduced images of famous artwork whenever you want online, so what makes it valuable, therefore, is not just the imagery.

Salvador Dalí is a notorious troll in this regard. Many of his works are extremely well known by their reproductions. but he plays with scale- the originals are often absurdly smaller or larger than you imagine from the reproductions.

Re: The Art Institute of Chicago Has Put 50k High-Res Images Online

#50

Post by jbarham »

photoGrant wrote: post #13
adriand wrote: post #10

This is pretty incredible. There was once a time when the only way for the average person to see a beautiful painting was to go to church. Later on this role was taken up by art galleries. Now anyone can see this stuff from the comfort of their own home. What do you think this means for the future of art galleries? What are they for ? Different ones are answering this question in different ways. Some are reinventing…

You may want to read 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' by Walter Benjamin; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...

Nah, don't bother reading it. The importance of Benjamin's essay has been vastly overrated by academic art theorists. As proof I would point out that the very first image in the linked article is Hokusai's iconic "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" which is of course a woodblock print (i.e., a "mechanical reproduction") but no less appreciated as a work of art for being so.
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