On 4 Mar 2010, at 19:59, Tom Holden wrote:
I think it's unlikely to be honest, though
you're welcome to try.
Because they're new works and often just photographs and/or digital
works, maintaining artificial scarcity is crucial for the artists
to be able to make any money.
That's one operating model - but I don't think it's the only one
(e.g. an alternative to making money on individual photographs is to
make money on the photographer's name, which can be done by having
high visibility and low (or in our case, free) cost for their
photographs rather than necessarily selling them for a high cost).
However, changing the whole business model of an organization is a
big challenge. ;-)
That said - the story is nice to know, and it's good to see museums
seeing the advantages of photographs taken in their galleries. I
would love to see them easing their photography restriction in the
future to something like "no photographs of individual works, but you
can take wider-angle photographs of the gallery". Or even, letting
people take photographs of individual works but with people also in
the frame ("take a photograph of your family around this picture").
Mike