For teams managing all sorts of content, these restrictions offer an opportunity to push beyond the obvious and explore fresh, inventive approaches.
Delve deeper into copyright and legal restrictions with Senior Creative Content Producer of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Holly Bennett.
Holly is a speaker for the upcoming 19th Social Media for Gov.
One of the things I keep front of mind is that limitations like copyright permissions aren’t in place for no reason – they often go right to the heart of why institutions like art museums exist: respecting and sharing art and those who create it. The inspiration is quite literally all around us at the Art Gallery, so it’s not hard to find amazing things to share across social media, but the ways in which we’re constrained means we often need to push past the ‘first idea’ and play with alternative approaches.
The incredible copyright team at the Art Gallery manages the rights, contracts and licensing agreements for artworks and exhibitions. They negotiate permissions and also advise on what’s not permitted, which can prompt brainstorms about what sits beyond the definite ‘no’.
If the artwork itself can’t be shown, what about motifs the artist frequently used – can they be recreated in an appropriate style for interactive digital elements like stickers? If only one or two artworks from a whole exhibition have flexible permissions, how can they be shown repeatedly without causing image fatigue – like creating a content bank with extreme close-ups, different room atmospheres, and curatorial commentary to encourage further contemplation?
It’s important to mention that these brainstorms aren’t just happening within the social media space. All across a museum, from curators to graphic designers to public programmers and more, everyone is working to find the best ways to connect people with art – so the conversations with colleagues to problem-solve, and then expand on each other’s solutions, are unbelievably valuable.
It’s often assumed that whoever owns a physical artwork is also the copyright owner, and can use the work in any way and any place they like. In reality, an artist or their estate will usually retain the artwork copyright, and if their work is held in a public art museum, the artist can veto image reproductions entirely – including on social media platforms – or negotiate a consultation process before any publishing. Copyright also includes moral rights, to ensure the works by a creator are treated with respect, and are correctly attributed.
The best way to work with these restrictions is to prepare a treatment of what’s actually intended for social media content, especially as the terminology and specific outputs of social media are constantly-changing mysteries even for regular users!
Some artists, estates or lenders may worry that relaxing permissions will result in content that departs from the original intent, aesthetic or spirit of the work, so having mock-ups can allay any fears and set parameters. And where possible, offer two options – rather than a blanket ‘no’ and having to go back to the drawing board, you might just get ‘not that one’.
There are other legal and institutional restrictions around what gets shown on social – some behind-the-scenes action is off-limits even though it’s fascinating and would make for great fly-on-the-wall content.
Showing artwork transport crates or direct handling of artworks? Usually a no for security and insurance reasons. Re-staging the hanging of a work once safety protocols are in place? Much more likely to get approval. Posting spontaneous shots of a delicate, recently-donated painting being cleaned? Not if you don’t want the combined horror of the conservation, philanthropy and visitor experience departments realising you’ve spoiled a triumphant end-of-year unveiling. But investigating the weird and wonderful tools that conservators use for an interactive socials series? Two gloved thumbs up!
Having a thorough knowledge of what artworks are out of copyright helps create flexible and responsive content within a lightning approval timeline. I’ll often use works from the historical collection with captions that change up the context, and finding new ways to interpret pieces without making any alterations to the image is a hilarious ongoing challenge. Tailoring content to the distinctive features of a social platform can also have great effect – like using the extended image ratio on Threads to post all of our uncroppable Long Art.
For major exhibitions where using direct artworks isn’t always permitted outside key marketing images, recognisable aspects of an artist’s visual language can be adapted for interactive use across social media’s unique tools like stickers and filters – for instance, Henri Matisse’s cut-out fronds and stars, Hilma af Klint’s mysterious symbols, and Alphonse Mucha’s art nouveau frames.
We’re also finding that more contemporary artists are keen to engage collaboratively, like creating art that lives on social platforms as well as in-gallery, supplying high-res or working files to ensure social content comes from a consistent starting point, or developing storylines with us that can be drawn out over image carousels.
One of the earliest creative projects I worked on was in support of the Japan Supernatural exhibition, a spectacular show that featured artworks from the 1700s all the way up to pieces created while the exhibition was happening. Big and tiny sculptures, paintings and woodblock prints, large-scale photography and murals, and each of them had very different image permissions.
Some historic works were out of copyright with no restrictions, allowing them to be animated and used across multiple areas, some 20th-century works could be shown but not altered in any way, some could be used in creative content but only for a large licensing fee, and other contemporary pieces were created by artists who were very open to their works being adapted for social media use, and were keen to collaborate in the process.
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To tie these together, we used an element of the exhibition narrative, the tradition of Japanese ghost storytelling, and combined it with physical aspects of the exhibition to show the Art Gallery as a space haunted by supernatural creatures.
This gave us the flexibility to feature all of the available artworks in the same video space with different treatments: Edo-period creatures leapt from animated scrolls, while mysterious figures looked on from photos on the walls and comic-style skeletons roared at the rising moon.
The storylines and creatures continued through a personality quiz and a spooky choose-your-own-adventure Messenger game, using a combination of artwork images and stylised characters.
Creating social media content on behalf of a state government art museum comes with expectations of fairness and best practice for artists and creators, so adhering to strong copyright principles helps build this trust with our audiences. Our online community expects that if artwork is featured in our social media, it has been used in agreement with the artist, not taken from another source without permission, and that they’ll be able to find out more about the work and its creator within the post itself, or via links to more comprehensive info on our website.
Any changes to an artist’s work – like cropping to fit an Instagram aspect ratio – are also noted in the image caption. This means that over the years our community has learned that as a general rule, we present artworks without visual interference or manipulation. This respect for artists and artwork is a fundamental part of moral rights – and it establishes a baseline level of trust, so even if posts have a playful, unexpected or informal tone, our audience knows we’re coming from a place of good faith and responds in kind.
Holly manages the organic social media channels at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, one of Australia’s flagship public art museums. A creative communicator and audience engagement leader, Holly has shaped the changing voice of the Art Gallery online across a momentous time in its history. With over a decade of experience in the digital culture sector, Holly brings together expertise in innovative brand storytelling, stakeholder collaboration, crisis navigation and community growth.
Adrianne Saplagio is a Content Producer at Comms Room, where she combines her passion for storytelling with her expertise in multimedia content creation. With a keen eye for detail and a knack for engaging audiences, Adrianne has been instrumental in crafting compelling narratives that resonate across various digital platforms.
