The Met announces free access to 400,000 digital images: the artworks’ metaphysics is expanding…

 

This morning Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, sent an email to the press announcing that “more than 400,000 high-resolution digital images of public domain works in the Museum’s world-renowned collection may be downloaded directly from the Museum’s website for non-commercial use – including in scholarly publications in any media – without permission from the Museum and without a fee”. According to the message “the Metropolitan Museum’s initiative – called Open Access for Scholarly Content – provides access to images of art in its collection that the Museum believes to be in the public domain and free of other known restrictions. Works that are covered by the new policy are identified on the Museum’s website (http://www.metmuseum.org/collections) with the acronym OASC”.

 

A few months ago also the Getty made a similar announcement, and we are very happy to say that many other museums all over the world are now following this policy. It is not easy to predict what will follow from this huge amount of free materials coming available, but at least a couple of things can be pinpointed. The first one is that on-line no-profit publications are receiving considerable benefits from this policy. The second one is that big museums are clearly considering that to share images of the artworks in their collection is better than to spend time and money in selecting where the images are published. Thus, a new frontier between form and information has been opened and the realm of the artworks’ metaphysics is expanding.

September 22, 2014