The Yale University Art Gallery works with three 3rd party licensing companies at this time. Art Resource, Scala and DNP Archives. We started out with Art Resource roughly 2-1/2 years ago, and about six months into our AR contract were asked if we'd consider also signing with Scala who cover Europe (Ted Feder of Art Resource has a connection with Scala). We amended our contract to include Scala as well and had to adjust the percentage take for Scala sales. Most recently we have signed on with DNP Archives who are based out of Tokyo.
With all three companies we have made the decision to share the same set of images, this makes tracking of who has what easier for us and given that each company represents a different global region we don't risk direct competition (we are currently researching companies who could represent us in South America). We do not work with Bridgeman mostly due to the request of Art Resource who are direct competitors with Bridgeman; however I do know that the Yale Center for British Art does and they are happy with the relationship. The images we selected were in part based on images we know are most popular due to the internal Rights and Reproductions requests we have handled of the years, and then also we allowed the companies to select a set of images they felt best covered their clients interest. Currently we have just over 600 of our images being represented and plan to send more once we establish a systematic way to deliver them, or allow them to harvest them from our servers. The Gallery has an internal R&R department which handles requests for images both commercial and scholarly but our hope is to farm off more and more of the commercial requests to these companies so we can focus on scholarly and research related requests. All-in-all the working relationship has been smooth with each company (DNP is still very new so I don't have a lot to go on yet). The most difficult process was establishing the contract with each organization, which in the case of Yale had to be run past central legal council. Besides added exposure of the Gallery collection the relationship with each company also generates a respectable income. I'd be happy to discuss our process' and such in more detail with you if you like. Please feel free to call or e-mail with more questions. John ff. ********************* John ffrench Associate Director, Visual Resources Department Yale University Art Gallery 203.432.8051 http://artgallery.yale.edu/ ________________________________ From: Karen E. Richter Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 11:30 AM To: 'mcn-l at mcn.edu' Subject: Stock photo companies Hello, I'm new to the list and would welcome your responses to this. I'm considering turning over some of our images to Art Resource and/or Bridgeman Art Library. Would any of you be willing to share information about your experience, especially your contractual arrangements with these companies and any changes you might have made to their standard contract? Also, how did you choose the images you provided, and if you signed on to both companies, how did you choose the images for one versus the other? Feel free to respond to me off-list. Thanks for your help. Karen Karen E. Richter Image Resources Manager Princeton University Art Museum Tel. 609 258 5828 Fax 609 258 6877 http://artmuseum.princeton.edu <http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/>
