The Public Domain Review

 The Public Domain Review website aims to share materials, specifically those that have fallen into the public domain.  The site features Collections and Essays and can be searched by medium, time, or tags. They have images, books, film, and audio.

As their website explains, The Public Domain Review is an online journal and not-for-profit project dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.
In particular, as our name suggests, the focus is on works which have now fallen into the public domain, that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction.

Screenshot taken of  the Public Domain Review Website

375,000 public domain images now available

The Met and ArtStor have announced the Met is sharing open content for 375,000 images of public domain works in the ArtStor database.

Users can choose a theme or a subject in art history and gather a sampling across cultures. In portraiture, a line can be drawn from antiquity through today, and illustrated with highlights
Other advantages to the digital collection include thousands of fragile drawings and manuscripts that have been restricted or unavailable are now exposed to scholars and students. In addition, detail and alternate views present objects in their entirety, including surfaces and features that are hidden in a conventional exhibition context. The images can be viewed when you are logged in to ArtStor.

UK Affirms that Photographs of Public Domain Art Are Fair Use

A recent article by Allison Meier talks about the decision as to whether high quality photographs of artwork in the public domain can and should be considered fair use.  Here is a link to the article: http://hyperallergic.com/261496/uk-affirms-that-photographs-of-public-domain-art-are-fair-use/

Lorenzo Lotto, "Portrait of a Woman inspired by Lucretia" (16th century), oil on canvas. (via National Gallery/Wikimedia). The image on Wikimedia through the Google Cultural Institute is one of the high resolution images of public domain art protected against new copyright.

 Lorenzo Lotto, “Portrait of a Woman inspired by Lucretia” (16th century), oil on canvas. (via National Gallery/Wikimedia). The image on Wikimedia through the Google Cultural Institute is one of the high resolution images of public domain art protected against new copyright.