→ A Guide to the Web's Growing Set of Free Image Collections / Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic
“On Monday, the J. Paul Getty Trust launched their Open Content Program, making more than 4,600 high-quality images of artwork available for free online. The digital images — of paintings by Van Gogh, drawings by Rembrandt, and watercolors by Dürer — had already fallen into the public domain, but the Getty’s program makes their digital reproductions much easier to use on the web.
They’re not the first museum to put so many images online this year. In the spring, the Rijksmuseum opened 125,000 digital images for use, with plans to digitize an additional 40,000 images from its archive every year.
When museums emancipate images like this, the benefits don’t only rebound upon the researchers, teachers, and students who can use and show high-resolution art in their books, lectures and papers. Putting images online helps anyone who wants to make a point with pictures, whether on their website or Facebook profile, on a t-shirt or, as a Rijksmuseum curator told the New York Times, on special Rembrandt toilet paper.
Below, we’ve listed the museums and research institutions that have large, high-quality, free-to-use collection of historically or aesthetically notable images online.” — The Atlantic
* * *
Туалетная бумага с Рембрандтом, а-а-а!
