The World Wide Wide....and the Effects it has had on Museums

This is a work from contemporary artist Richard Prince

Class Date: March 23, 2011

In class we continued our discussion about museums and gallery space.  This discussion took a different turn, however.  We discussed the impact the world wide wide has had on museums and how this impact has been mostly negative.  The first big area the world wide wide approaches is copyright laws.  A copyright is defined as a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work.  Artists obtain these copyrights to make sure that their work isn't duplicated by another artist and to make sure their art is always their property.  An artist that plays with the fine line of copyrights is Richard Prince.  Prince is a contemporary artists that appropriates images and is very non-chalant about stealing others images.  he also uses technology to customize these paintings into his own work.  There has been a large number of law suits because of technology and there will be many more to come as technology expands.

The second half of class we began the movie "Mona Lisa Curse."  This documentary is written and narrated by Robert Hughes and discusses the journey of the Mona Lisa, arguably the world's most famous painting, and the impact it had on the art industry, especially in the United States.  He begins the documentary with a quote from Andy Warhol saying "good business is the best art."  This means that business is an art and the best kind of art.  If one can master good business, he has mastered the best kind of art.  The Mona Lisa came over to the United States from France in the 1960s and has changed the art industry forever.  It created all new expectations for art and these expectations were set higher than before.  Since it was the most famous painting, every gallery in the United States wanted it for some period because people were coming from all over to see it.  This is where the idea of sending copies of paintings came about.  I think it is wrong to send copies of paintings because people are paying money to see the actual painting and if I was in the position to see the world's most famous painting I would want it to be real!