An overview of the history and climate around museum practices regarding the publishing of reproductions of images in their collections.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
During the past twenty years, technology has dramatically changed the way museums document and manage information about their collections internally, and provide access to object information and images externally.

Art museum photography studios that have gone completely digital report signicant increases in productivity. High-end digital photography now produces images of comparable or better quality than does analog photography. Improved color management routines are beginning to ensure that digital images can faithfully reproduce the original art object in print. The expansion of art history graduate programs and incorporation of art images into interdisciplinary studies have increased readership for scholarly publications that include images of art and architecture.

Yet scholars and publishers perceive a mounting crisis in art book publishing. Christopher Lyon, Executive Director of Prestel Publishing, explains:

Government figures for hardcover sales of illustrated books indicate that serious illustration-driven art books...amount to no more than one to two percent of annual U.S. trade book sales. Anecdotal evidence suggests that this small segment of the market is dead in the water…. This gloomy situation is ironic because we are living in what ought to be a golden age for the production and consumption of art books. Never has the potential quality of art printing been higher than it is today.... Unfortunately, as technical possibilities proliferate so too do permission regulations and fees.... Among the changes negatively affecting art book production since the 1980s, the most significant appear to be the sharp rise in picture costs and increasing restrictions on reproduction rights.

This paper explores some of the reasons art museums cite for charging licensing fees for scholarly publications
and examines the validity of the following arguments: ...

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By: Nancy Allen
CONNEXIONS
Rice University, Houston, Texas

CONTENTS
1 Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Introduction . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3 Museum Licensing Fees: Practice and Rationale . . . . . . 5
4 Changing Landscape . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5 Factors in Providing Fee-Free Images for Scholarly Publication . . . . . . . 9
6 Approaches to Distribution of Fee-Free Images: Case Studies of Three Museums . .  15
7 Conclusion . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
8 Acknowledgments . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Index . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Attributions .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

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