Patricia Aufderheide's Posts

Dear CMSI,

I work at a museum and I’m on a team that’s putting together an exhibition on art emerging from twenty-first-century protest movements, with a web component and an interactive, online catalogue. Some of the art is digital, some is ephemeral, some of it was created anonymously. I already have access to most of it, but do I need to get permissions before I can use it? Read more...

Dear CMSI,

I am working on an installation. One of its main features will be a display with current websites of top news sources in different countries. It was also have a loop playing below it of headline news from the week before. Do I have to ask permission from anyone to build this material into my work? Read more...

Is documentary a genre? The Tribeca Film Festival this April, which Indiewire just rated among the top three for documentary, gave a chance to survey the scene of docs and look for trends. “Too many people think documentary is a genre,” said programmer Cara Cusumano. “But documentary can have every genre a narrative film can be.”

You can slice the genre question a lot of ways, but you can’t deny that the marketplace for real-life entertainment has never been hotter, and even on the indie doc circuit makers are working within formats that sell. And you can’t deny Tribeca Film Festival is positioning itself as not only a showcase but a market. At the documentary smorgasbord of Tribeca, you could see documentaries working within formats designed for great promo and quick sale. But you could also find the improbable, the quirky, and the shocking. Read more...

The visual arts community is already putting the Code of Best Practices in the Visual Arts to work in Detroit. At a late-April meeting at the Cranbrook Art Museum, speakers showed fair use can enable work in five areas.

After a presentation on the Code by Janet Landay of the College Art Association and Patricia Aufderheide, a panel of experts explained why fair use matters to them: Read more...

Dear CMSI,

I am mounting an exhibition that involves art that features reproductions of many corporate logos. Do I have to license all these logos? And do I have to blur them out on the images representing the exhibition on my website? Read more...