Library and Academic Success: Museum & Gallery Studies: Copyright in Museums

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Copyright in Museums

Navigating and understanding copyright is essential for museum work. Copyright is the right to copy or reproduce a legally protected work. Copyright law protects creators' rights while allowing users some rights to copy or reproduce a legally protected work. Copyright applies to all "works" and this means artistic, dramatic, music or literary works as well as film, broadcasts and sound recordings. Check out Copyright at Georgian to find more information.

Copyright affects museums in two ways: One, if the museum is the creator of new content, which can be protected by copyright law or two, if the museum is dealing with or using somebody's else's copyright-protected content. Each of these needs different approaches, knowledge and policies.

The museum as content-creator means that it will manage its content, either licensing it out, making it freely available or, if needed, regulating its use. This can include content like the text in displays or exhibition catalogues since in many cases the copyright in anything created in the course of employment will belong to the employer/museum.

If the museum is using someone else's copyright-protected content, such as a museum photographing a painting in a collection, then just because the museum owns the painting, doesn't mean it owns the copyright; therefore, it will be restricted in the ways it can make copies of that work. When organizing digital projects (putting images up on a website) or exhibitions, a copyright strategy is needed.

To learn more details about copyright and intellectual property for museums and art galleries, please visit the following resources:

From: https://museums.ca/site/reportsandpublications/museonline/winter2021_interview

AI Art, Creative Agency, and the Limits of Intellectual Property by Zeilinger, Martin
ISBN: 9783957961839
Publication Date: 2021
How do artistic experiments with artificial intelligence problematize human-centered notions of creative agency, authorship, and ownership? Offering discussion of contemporary digital art practices, philosophical and technical considerations of AI, posthumanist thought, and emerging issues of intellectual property and the commons, this book is firmly positioned against the anthropomorphic spectacle of “creative AI.” It proposes instead the concept of the posthumanist agential assemblage, and invites readers to consider what new types of creative practice, what reconfigurations of the author function, and what critical interventions become possible when AI art provokes tactical entanglements between aesthetics, law, and capital.
Art and Authority by K. E. Gover
ISBN: 9780198768692
Publication Date: 2018
People engage with authored works all the time. They buy paintings, read books, and download songs. They might even be artists themselves. And yet they tend to take the concept of authorship for granted. The basic idea that an artist as author maintains some kind of claim to his creation, even as it circulates in the world at large, seems natural. It is the basis for copyright law and moral rights legislation which protect the rights of authors. But what is an author, and why do artists receive special legal recognition and protection that the creators of other kinds of artifacts do not?It is often assumed that artists have a special bond with their artworks, but the nature of this bond, and its function as the source of an artist's authority over his work, often goes unquestioned.Art and Authority is a philosophical essay on artistic freedom: its sources, nature, and limits.
Indigenous Notions of Ownership and Libraries, Archives and Museums by Camille Callison (Editor); Loriene Roy (Editor); Gretchen Alice LeCheminant (Editor)
ISBN: 9783110362992
Publication Date: 2016
Tangible and intangible forms of indigenous knowledges and cultural expressions are often found in libraries, archives or museums. Often the "legal" copyright is not held by the indigenous people's group from which the knowledge or cultural expression originates. Indigenous peoples regard unauthorized use of their cultural expressions as theft and believe that the true expression of that knowledge can only be sustained, transformed, and remain dynamic in its proper cultural context. Readers will begin to understand how to respect and preserve these ways of knowing while appreciating the cultural memory institutions' attempts to transfer the knowledges to the next generation.
Permissions, a Survival Guide by Susan M. Bielstein
ISBN: 9780226046372
Publication Date: 2006
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it's a good bet that at least half of those words relate to the picture's copyright status. Art historians, artists, and anyone who wants to use the images of others will find themselves awash in byzantine legal terms, constantly evolving copyright law, varying interpretations by museums and estates, and despair over the complexity of the whole situation. Here, on a white--not a high--horse, Susan Bielstein offers her decades of experience as an editor working with illustrated books. In doing so, she unsnarls the threads of permissions that have ensnared scholars, critics, and artists for years.