In response to the question about copyright and artwork, any work made before 1923 is considered to...

In response to the question about copyright and artwork, any work made before 1923 is considered to be in the public domain, including photographs and digital reproductions of the works, provided that they are true to the original. For artwork not under the public domain it depends. Most artwork in museums is licensed so that it, and digital reproductions can be used for non-commercial use. It gets more complicated when dealing with works that are in private collections, since their works may not be licensed for noncommercial use.

This is a really broad overview, and there’s a lot of grey area, but in short, most of the works on museums are in the public domain, or at least available for non-commercial use. I for one have never heard of a Tumblr running into any legal trouble with using artworks from museum websites, most likely because most of the art tumblrs are non-commercial projects. If you want to use an artwork from a museum for commercial use, I’d suggest contacting a lawyer who specializes in art law or the institution itself.

Thanks! From toads to copyright you can always find somebody on Tumblr to enlighten you…