The VRC can provide support for image publishing questions through our Images for Publication and Dissertation services. Please note that the Visual Resources Center (VRC) staff are not lawyers and we cannot provide you with legal advice. However, we can provide you with helpful information about including images in your publication. If you have questions or would like to discuss any image copyright issues, please email visualresources@uchicago.edu. Please carefully review advice and information provided by the VRC and make whatever decision you feel most comfortable with.
This guide contains links to resources that inform the VRC’s understanding of copyright and fair use implications in arts publishing and shares some of the strategies and practices VRC staff employ to assess the copyright status of images and artworks. [Last updated 5/2/2024]
General Resources and Guides
- College Art Association: Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts
- Bielstein, Susan M. Permissions, a Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property [e-book]. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
- Copyright Term and Public Domain in the United States
- Digital Copyright Slider: Is it Protected by Copyright? For works published in the U.S.A.
- Digital Image Rights Computator
- University of Chicago Library’s Guide to Copyright-free and Copyright-lenient Images
- Visual Resources Association Statement on The Fair Use of Images for Teaching, Research, and Study
- College Art Association: Intellectual Property and the Arts
- Columbia University Libraries/Information Services: What is Fair Use?
- Images of Works of Art in Museum Collections: The Experience of Open Access by Kristin Kelly for the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (June 2013)
- Describing Visual Resources Toolkit for Accessibility in Arts & Humanities Publications
Strategies for Starting Copyright Research
Questions to Consider
- Was the work created by multiple artists/collaborators?
Artist Rights Society
- ARS can be a good place to run a first check, especially for Western modern/contemporary
For Deceased Artists
- Works created pre-1927 are likely not copyrighted
- Look for estates and/or galleries who represent the artist
- Some are represented by multiple galleries
- Some galleries don’t represent estates of deceased artists, some do
- Estates might be represented by family members (direct or indirect)
- This may relate to “orphan works” and other fair use implications, so good to track where you searched, even if you don’t find a contact person
- Look at most recent exhibition catalog by major institutions (credits / copyrights often listed in the back) OR exhibition website
- VRC staff can post inquiries for help to find a copyright holder to the MUSIP list (Museum Intellectual Property)
For Living Artists
- Copyright for collaborative artists’ works – looking at copyright for both/all artists
- Studio information or artist’s personal website
- Look at most recent exhibition catalog by major institutions (credits / copyrights often listed in the back) OR exhibition website
- Archives of American Art Oral History Archive – searching for related names and cities
Strategies for Conducting Fair Use Analysis
Your publisher or editor may be open to publishing images under fair use (for example, Art Journal and Yale University Press have robust fair use policies). For works and/or images that are copyrighted, conduct a fair use analysis to see if you can justify your use of the image in your justification. The VRC follows the CAA Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for the Visual Arts. Section One of the code outlines the situations, principles and limitations of using images fairly in analytic writing.
If you intend to use an image under fair use in your publication, you should prepare a justification for that claim of fair use in your tracking spreadsheet.
The United States Copyright Act provides a framework to determine whether the use of copyrighted materials constitutes a “fair use” based upon a consideration of the following Four Factors:
- Purpose and character of your use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
- The nature of the copyrighted work you want to use;
- The amount and substantiality of the portion of the work that you used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
- The effect of your use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The United States Copyright Office provides useful guidance for understanding this analysis.
Requesting and Obtaining Permissions
If you need to draft a letter or email to request permission, sample language can be found in Susan Bielstein’s Permissions, a Survival Guide (2006) as well as on the websites of many academic presses, including: