Open access to collections is a no-brainer – it’s a clear-cut extension of any museum’s mission

Douglas McCarthy and Andrea Wallace | Apollo | 1st June 2020

The dry topic of copyright gets a dust-off. Museums under lockdown are seeing increased online traffic, renewing the long-standing debate about publicly releasing digital images of their collections. Such moves, which are “becoming mainstream” have been shown to boost scholarship and public engagement. Image licensing is costly to administer, yields little revenue and now “looks like a losing hand”.