I should have said it in my previous message : the first and foremost
priority for France, is that Government-owned museums allow visitors
who paid their entrance ticket to carry a camera and take pictures of
paintings and sculptures when the painters and sculptors died more
than 70 years ago.
In 2005, the Government-owned Guimet museum in Paris, which is famous
for its Chinese and Japanese art collections, asked for 50€ for each
non-commercial-purpose photographic shot and 5000€ for a
commercial-purpose shot (1).
Telling the Museum administrators that we want to use their pictures
taken by their photographers is not the best message. The best message
is : allow every camera carrying citizen to take his own pictures.
If they want to contribute to Wikipedia with photographs taken by
their photographers, it is OK but it is not a priority.
(1)
http://web.archive.org/web/20050305062057/www.museeguimet.fr/homes/home_id2…
2009/9/28, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com>om>:
2009/9/28 <wiki-lists(a)phizz.demon.co.uk>uk>:
From the earlier poster Teofilo:
I disagree. I think the priority is to have the full
resolution pictures of Public Domain works.
That seems to be a demand to have the highest resolution copies possible.
That sets it out as a goal, not a demand.
But getting back to the case in question - we're talking about the
sort of museum that's actually a government sub-department. Thus,
public domain images that the taxpayer has *already paid for*. I see
nothing whatsoever unreasonable about the idea of asking-to-demanding
those. They're owned by the public, not by the museum bureaucrats.