There is certainly politics and posturing and power grabs behind the scenes, but besides that if we look at the economics it’s clearly worth revisiting.
I can understand a museum being worried about the long-term with the current structure:
- Operating a museum necessarily needs money. It’s not always a huge amount if they have the right relationships, but it’s never $0 and so money needs to come in
- Selling tickets relies on people seeing value in seeing the pieces in person
- Selling gift shop items also relies on people coming in as well as being the only source for good quality versions of those things
- Selling posters and other prints also relies on being the only source for good quality versions
What else brings in cash besides government funding (at risk over decades as politics shift) and maybe sales of some pieces (unsustainable of course since you need those to run a museum)?
I can understand the admin staff being terrified of letting the general public have access to files that have the potential to be turned in to perfect enough recreations, but I think everyone here knows that fear and litigation cannot solve their problems any more.
What is sustainable long-term? I suspect that an important piece is that on the whole, enough people want history to be preserved properly and they want some sort of institution to handle that preservation for the public good.
I really don’t think that the existence of high quality reproductions would make a difference. The people who want to visit the museum want to have the full experience of the museum and be in the presence of the originals.
Most museums are happy to share digital versions because it helps increase awareness and expose more people to the work, which then makes more people want to come to the museum for the experience
Musée Rodin, 2010-2013: "The curiosity aroused by the content and quality of the digital image and the 3D model will encourage Internet users to come and discover the sculptor’s work in its museum setting."
"In the short term, the project to put all of the Rodin Museum’s digital collections online in 2D and 3D will enhance the dissemination of the work of this world-renowned artist."
I do wonder what the end goal of people like Amélie Simier is. How is this a hill worth dying on, or at the very least leaving behind a family legacy of being a moron?
The rule of law is a hill worth dying on.
The museum and judges are outlaws.