Image Use Guidelines

The Image Use Guidelines

Artcyclopedia is now highlighting external websites which have a copyright statement or a Terms of Use agreement that allows surfers to reuse art images for school projects, on personal websites, and in some cases even in commercial products. Note that we are not granting permission or making a legal assessment; all we can do is point you to each site's own copyright statement.

It's important to remember that a website's policy does not override the artist's own copyright protection, so if you're dealing with 20th-century artists you should be doubly careful.

How it works is, when you see one of the following checkmark icons next to an external link, click on the icon to see that specific website's image use policy. It is strongly recommended that you check out the exact details of the website's terms before using any images.

Every site is a bit different, but we've grouped the types of permissions into three basic groups:

		Students and teachers are granted permission to use works for school reports and projects.

		Images can be used for educational purposes and also for personal projects, such as a personal homepage, but generally not as part of any commercial (for-profit) endeavor.

		Images can be freely reused for any purpose. However the license may include a requirement to provide attribution, or that derivative works be published under the same type of licence.

(no icon)		Website is assumed to retain all rights. You still have the right to save or print images for your own use. As for reproducing works, "Fair Use" may still apply, depending on the details of the work being reproduced and the nature of the intended use.

I hope this goes some way towards providing people with the ability to locate art images that they can use without feeling like pirates. Questions about image use are one of the most common types of query we receive, so I know that web surfers are aware of copyright law and are anxious to know how they can comply with it.

P.S. I encourage all museums and non-profit institutions to follow the example of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and to make an affirmative statement that downloading and printing images for educational uses is allowed, at least for artists whose period of copyright protection has expired. It's hard to imagine a museum objecting to this kind of use, which is so obviously consistent with any museums's core mandate. But without a clear statement to this effect, students and teachers are forced to wrestle with the slippery principle of Fair Use.

P.P.S. I've created a thread at ArtConversation.com where interested parties can discuss this issue. Speaking personally, I'm particularly interested in how educators are dealing with this issue on a day-to-day basis, and if there's a way for Artcyclopedia to add value to that process. Here's the link: Discussion: Educational Use of Art Images.