Yesterday the Getty announced that it would make available all images of public domain works of art in the Getty’s collections. The initial release includes “making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.” This is not just the release of images of the museum’s collection, it is apparently the beginning of the Getty’s ‘Open Content Program‘. This will share not only images from the collection, but also images from the collections of the Getty Research Institute such as documentation from field projects, publications and the Getty Vocabularies.
The Getty joins other US institutions such as the Walters Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, Yale University, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Harvard University, along with places like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in making high resolution images freely available to download. there is still some variation in the licenses, some like Harvard University allow free use for non-commercial and scholarly purposes, and the Getty seems to follow this, stating that it will use commercial fees to help care for its collection. Others – like the Walters and the Rijksmuseum – also allow free commercial use.
The Getty states on its website that its rationale is
The Getty was founded on the conviction that understanding art makes the world a better place, and sharing our digital resources is the natural extension of that belief. This move is also an educational imperative. Artists, students, teachers, writers, and countless others rely on artwork images to learn, tell stories, exchange ideas, and feed their own creativity. In its discussion of open content, the most recent Horizon Report, Museum Edition stated that “it is now the mark—and social responsibility—of world-class institutions to develop and share free cultural and educational resources.”
Great to see and hopefully some Australian institutions might soon start to follow suit.
© Katrina Grant 2013
