Exciting! Getty Trust Launches Open Content Program With 4,600 Hi-Res Images Now Free to Use, More Images Coming Soon

From The Getty Trust Blog Post by Getty President and CEO, James Cuno:

The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty’s collections. Today we’ve taken a first step toward this goal by making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.
These are high-resolution, reproduction-quality images with embedded metadata, some over 100 megabytes in size. You can browse all available images here, or look for individual “download” links on the Getty Museum’s collection pages. As part of the download, we’ll ask for a very brief description of how you’re planning to use the image. We hope to learn that the images will serve a broad range of needs and projects.
We plan to release many more images of works of art in the public domain over time, both from the Museum’s collection and from the special collections of the Getty Research Institute. We’re conducting a thorough review of copyright and privacy restrictions on our holdings to identify all the images we can make available.
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Why open content? Why now? The Getty was founded on the conviction that understanding art makes the world a better place, and sharing our digital resources is the natural extension of that belief. This move is also an educational imperative. Artists, students, teachers, writers, and countless others rely on artwork images to learn, tell stories, exchange ideas, and feed their own creativity.

Read the Complete Blog Post
Direct to the Open Content Program Web Page
Includes specifics about attribution, publication, and rights.
Additional Details in the News Release:

The Getty Research Institute is currently determining which images from its special collections can be made available under this program, and the Getty Conservation Institute is working to make available images from its projects worldwide.
“The Museum is delighted to make these images available as the first step in a Getty-wide move toward open content,” said J. Paul Getty Museum Director Timothy Potts. “The Getty’s collections are greatly in demand for publications, research and a variety of personal uses, and I am pleased that with this initiative they will be readily available on a global basis to anyone with Internet access.”

Coverage

• Getty Releases 4,600 Images as Open Content (via OpenGlam Blog)

Hat Tip: @mattrweaver

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, News, Preservation