The Artists Rights Society (ARS) and ARTstor are pleased to announce that they have reached an agreement under which ARTstor will distribute to its participating institutions throughout the United States and Canada a rich body of images of modern and contemporary art for educational and scholarly use. Under this collaborative agreement, ARTstor will include digital images of a significant number of copyrighted works of art by artists and estates represented by ARS.
Theodore Feder, President of the Artists Rights Society, expressed his enthusiasm for this collaboration. “We are very pleased to inaugurate our collaboration and to contribute to the many authorized images offered by ARTstor,” says Feder. James Shulman, Executive Director of ARTstor, similarly expressed his pleasure for the relationship that ARTstor has built with ARS. “We have been developing collections of modern and contemporary art from ARTstor’s inception, and are continuing to build new collections on an ongoing basis,” says Shulman. “But we have all along felt that we need a way for artists and estates to have a voice in the development of ARTstor, and this agreement helps accomplish that.” Samuel Sachs II, President of the Krasner-Pollock Foundation, also voiced his support for this relationship. “From Ancient Chinese cave painting to Pollock and well beyond, ARTstor is demonstrating its enormous potential to transform the way in which art history is taught and learned,” stated Sachs. “The agreement to enable modern and contemporary artists to be included is a major step forward.”
Under this agreement, ARTstor expects to make available soon a significant number of images of modern and contemporary art works by ARS artists. ARS represents numerous artists and estates, including (to name a few): Anni Albers, Milton Avery, Alexander Calder, Sam Francis, Red Grooms, Robert Indiana, Barnett Newman, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, Susan Rothenberg, Mark Rothko, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and Frank Lloyd Wright.
US art museums contributing modern and contemporary art to ARTstor – including both former museum members of the Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) and other museums sharing content through ARTstor – will also benefit directly from this agreement, which includes a provision authorizing these museums to place images of a number of works by ARS’ American artists on their own websites when they contribute images of those works to ARTstor for educational and scholarly use.
ARS is the preeminent organization for visual artists in the United States. Founded in 1987, ARS represents the intellectual property rights interests of many visual artists and estates of visual artists (such as painters, sculptors, photographers, architects and others).
