Let’s talk at THATCamp about this stuff. Dan Cohen and I have been talking lately with members of our Art History faculty about collaborating on digital projects, and we have come up with some good (but vague) ideas. Unusually, Art History is actually part of the History Department at George Mason (as opposed to being part of Fine Arts or by itself as it usually is). CHNM is also part of the History Department, and we’re hoping to use that institutional proximity to forge/test some models for digital art history.

Tom

Ben - Some museums and libraries do offer higher resolution images for a price- but you’re right, the mechanisms to support the selling of these images (and the cost of the original creation) probably cost more than they would make from selling the images.

That is probably the biggest argument I’d have for grant funding that would cover the cost of making high quality digital images which are then made available free online. This is one thing I think the NEA really *should* be involved in.

That’s an interesting idea. I’ve been decorating my office with images downloaded from the Library of Congress and printed via Costco. What I’d really like, however, is to get Repin’s “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks” printed on a wallhog, to put on the wall behind me. The problem is that even the lovely 2,202 × 1,300 version at Wikimedia Commons is too low-res for a mural-sized printing.

The thing is, for all these personal decoration projects, I’m paying between 8-10 dollars (for Costco) and $100+. I’d happily pay half, or perhaps even the same amount for a higher-resolution image of Repin. But the market apparently doesn’t exist.