ABSTRACT
Art museums in the United States have traditionally acted not only as caretakers of works of art, themselves, but as proprietors of all reproduction rights for those works as well. Typically, museums charge fees for such things as photographing works of art, renting color transparencies, providing black-and-white copy prints, and for all sorts of reproduction rights as may be applied to the publication of scholarly articles, to the covers of novels or to CD-ROMs, for instance. Different fees are charged for different types of use; scholars and non-profit organizations are typically charged less than commercial publishers. Usually, photographing works of art in the museum’s collection is restricted in some way: either photography by non-museum staff is not allowed at all, or else outside photographers are asked not to publish their photographs without the museum’s permission.
