The Visual Resources Center provides and facilitates access to images that depict art and other forms of creative expression. We also assist our faculty members and students with the making and editing digital images that are themselves creative artwork. These images and artworks are generally both “original works of authorship,” which are automatically protected by copyright from the moment of their creation. This protection grants a work’s creator the exclusive right to distribute, reproduce, make derivative copies, and display or perform the work publicly. The majority of images in the VRC's collections and other online sources are protected by copyright.
This protection, available to both published and unpublished works (including images), lasts until the copyright expires and the work passes into the public domain. Works in the public domain are not protected by copyright, which means they may be used freely by anyone. Aside from the expiration of copyright, original works of authorship can be in the public domain if a) the creator failed to satisfy statutory formalities to maintain the copyright, b) the creator of the work is the U.S. Government, or c) the creator has formally relinquished his or her rights under the law. Facts are not covered by copyright.
A complication regarding images of art and architecture is that they frequently involve two layers of copyright protection: that of the owner of the underlying work (e.g., a sculpture), and that of the owner of the image depicting that underlying work (e.g., the photograph of that sculpture). While the underlying work may be in the public domain, a photograph of it may simultaneously be protected by copyright.
In the US, any creative works (including images depicting creative works) published before the 20th century are in the public domain. The status of works and images created 1925 or after is not straightforward (see the Cornell University Library's Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States chart). Determining whether a work or image is copyrighted, by whom, and whether it’s been published can be sometimes be difficult, but it is important not to assume that an image posted online is free to use for any purpose.
Fair Use and "copyleft" licensing provide some exceptions provide exceptions to the exclusive right of copyright owners to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce their work.
Please note that this site is not intended to provide legal advice about copyright.
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Visual Resources Center, Department of Art and Art History, University of Colorado Boulder. https://www.colorado.edu/artandarthistory/vrc