{"id":284590,"date":"2025-11-11T04:17:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T04:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/284590\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T04:17:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T04:17:09","slug":"you-dont-need-to-steal-art-from-the-getty-to-have-it-at-home-the-museum-is-giving-it-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/284590\/","title":{"rendered":"You don\u2019t need to steal art from the Getty to have it at home. The museum is giving it away"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Getty is one of Southern California\u2019s most renowned art museums, but for the past year there\u2019s been another reason to love it.<\/p>\n

Sure, you can peruse the artworks in person. But now you can also have a slice of that experience at home, or really anywhere.<\/p>\n

Last year, the museum updated its collection to allow for thousands of pieces to be available for free \u2014 digitally. The Getty says the response has been striking, with about a half million downloads this year alone.<\/p>\n

Why the art is being given away<\/p>\n

Roughly 88,000 artworks are available under the Creative Commons Zero<\/a> license, which puts the pieces in the public domain. That means you could put a Monet painting on your wall, or create your wedding invites with ancient mosaic images.<\/p>\n

David Newbury, the Getty\u2019s \u200asenior director of public technologies, says the museum used to have its own license for years under its open content program<\/a>, but the museum would get a lot of questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we learned was most people aren\u2019t lawyers,\u201d he said. \u201c\u200a[Creative Commons Zero] didn\u2019t actually change what you could do with it, but it changed how easy it was for people to understand what you could do with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The switch to Creative Commons Zero has driven a lot more interest. Newbury says Van Gogh\u2019s \u201cIrises\u201d is the most popular image with 3,000 downloads this year, but people are using the entire collection too. Animal pictures, for example, are another favorite.<\/p>\n

How to get the free art<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Van Gogh’s “Irises.”<\/p>\n

(<\/p>\n

Courtesy the Getty Museum<\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n

The Getty\u2019s downloadable artworks can be found on the museum\u2019s website<\/a>. Use keywords in the search bar to get started, like an artist\u2019s name or \u201cflowers.\u201d Then, make sure the \u201copen content\u201d filter is selected. Images in the public domain will show a download button with high-resolution sizing.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aI hang out in museum circles and one of the coolest things that I see pretty regularly is our images being used in other people\u2019s slideshows,\u201d Newbury said.<\/p>\n

But you can do much more. The license means the Getty has dedicated a given artwork to the public domain. It becomes a resource for everyone, where you can do anything you want with it. That includes selling things, putting the images in movies, or using them for your own personal artwork.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Claude Monet’s “Still Life with Flowers and Fruit”<\/p>\n

(<\/p>\n

Courtesy the Getty Museum<\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n

Newbury says you\u2019re welcome to credit the Getty while using an image, but you aren\u2019t required to. The only thing they ask is that you don\u2019t pretend to be the museum or suggest it endorsed your work.<\/p>\n

More content is coming to the program too. The Getty is currently working through millions of archive materials collected about artists over the years, like scrapbooks. Newbury says those will be made public if copyright rules allow.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWe have something like 20 miles of archival shelving,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a project of a generation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Getty is one of Southern California\u2019s most renowned art museums, but for the past year there\u2019s been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88,150289,150288,150291,130794,150290],"class_list":{"0":"post-284590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-design","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-free-art","14":"tag-getty-museum","15":"tag-irises","16":"tag-public-domain","17":"tag-van-gogh"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}