Hi list: This little bit cropped up on the ever-wonderful BoingBoing today. I always tend to look closely at blog posts/complaints about museums being a little, um, overbearing. Sometimes the author is, IMO, wrong (as in the case of a photographer lambasting SFMOMA for not being allowed to photograph in their galleries: http://thomashawk.com/2004/08/editorial-on-camera-policies-in.html ), and sometimes I think they're correct, as in this post:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/11/27/thomas_jeffersons_ar.html "Thomas Jefferson's art collection copyrighted? My pal and Institute for the Future colleagues Mike Love writes: After Thanksgiving my family visited Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson in Charlottesville, Virginia. Before entering, the tour guide told us that we couldn't take any photos inside because they "don't own the copyright for some of the works of art." This peeved me in light of the copyright-restricted space post I had read recently about misusing the language of copyright to intimidate people. In protest I tried to take a no-flash picture of Jefferson's engraved copy of the Declaration of Independence, but was politely told to stop - and reminded that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation doesn't own the copyright to some of his works of art. If they don't own the copyright to his nearly 200 year-old art then who does!?" The only thing I can think of is that if some pieces are recent copies, owned by a third party, then the derivatives would be copyrighted, right? ~Perian Sully Judah L. Magnes Museum
