Slashdot Mirror
Art School's Expensive Art History Textbook Contains No Actual Art
Dr Herbert West writes "Students at Ontario College of Art and Design were forced to buy a $180 textbook filled with blank squares. Instead of images of paintings and sculpture throughout history (that presumably would fall under fair-use) the textbook for 'Global Visual and Material Culture: Prehistory to 1800' features placeholders with a link to an online image. A letter from the school's dean stated that had they decided to clear all the images for copyright to print, the book would have cost a whopping $800. The screengrabs are pretty hilarious, or depressing, depending on your point of view."
Link from summary - Salon: "This article originally appeared on Hyperallergic. "
Hyperallergic - "What is this, October!? According to a blog post"
Original Source: http://www.ashleyit.com/blogs/brentashley/2012/09/16/copyright-and-the-pictureless-art-history-textbook/
Indeed. From the Art Institute of Chicago...
Photography
You are welcome to take photographs of the permanent collection and selected loan exhibitions. Please respect signage in exhibitions prohibiting photography of specific works of art. Photographs must use existing light (no flash photography) and are allowed with the condition that the images are for personal, nondistributional, noncommercial use. Flashes, tripods, and video cameras are prohibited.
Members of the media should contact our Department of Public Affairs at (312) 443-3626 or aicpublicaffairs@artic.edu to arrange shoots for still photography and film.
Emphasis mine. I'm not sure what the arrangements would look like for commercial use, but I'd guess they're usually expensive and very specific. As a side note, any school that makes it mandatory to purchase a $180 art book with no photos should suffer a lack of enrollment. That's disgusting, even beyond the usual, disgusting text book scam.