Abstract

In keeping with the general theme of the General Assembly of CIPSH in Beijing, 2004, in this article I emphasize the potential of the internet to impact the use of works of art in public and private museums for study and research, and for the publication of research. The possibility exists nowadays of creating a hyper-real ‘musée imaginaire’ or ‘museum without walls’ to use André Malraux's phrase of more than fifty years ago. It is hard to see how it could be anything but a benefit to human knowledge to have images of all works in the public domain (that is, for which the creator's copyright has expired) available on the world wide web. Under US law this year (2006) that would mean all works created before 1911. There are encouraging developments in that direction, but there is also constant legal wrangling. And I have to admit there are sometimes two sides to the question, even if I think one argument is far stronger than the other.