Web Gallery of Art
{{Short description|Virtual gallery for European fine art}}
{{Infobox company
| name = Web Gallery of Art
| image = Web Gallery of Art logo.gif
| image_size = 250px
| image_caption = Logo of Web Gallery of Art.
| location = N.A.
| area_served = Worldwide
| founder = Emil Kren and Daniel Marx
| services = Virtual art gallery
| homepage = {{official URL}}
| type = Virtual museum/Online art database
| founded = {{start date and age|1996|}}
}}
The Web Gallery of Art (WGA) is a virtual art gallery website. It displays historic European visual art, mainly from the Baroque, Gothic and Renaissance periods, available for educational and personal use.{{cite web | url=http://www.lib.utexas.edu/indexes/titles.php?id=491 | title=Web Gallery of Art | publisher=The University of Texas, USA | access-date=May 5, 2012}} In February 2025, the website was inaccessible for a few days but everything became normal again in March.
Overview
The website contains reproductions of over 48,600 works{{cite web|url=http://www.wga.hu/index.html|title=Web Gallery of Art|access-date=30 May 2020}} and includes accompanying text on the artworks and artists, accessible through a searchable database. The site is a leading example of an independently established collection of high-quality historically important pictures.
The viewer can select the size of the image; associated music is also included to accompany viewing, and posters of displayed artworks are available. The facility was created by Emil Kren and Daniel Marx.
Copyrights
Most of the images in the gallery are of works that are out of copyright, as they were all produced before 1900 and all named artists in the collection were born well before 1900. However, copyright for the reproductions displayed on the website may apply within some legal systems. The WGA itself gives the following copyright statement:
The Web Gallery of Art is copyrighted as a database. Images and documents downloaded from this database can only be used for educational and personal purposes. Distribution of the images in any form is prohibited without the authorization of their legal owner.
{{Cite web|url=https://www.wga.hu/support/mobile/legal.html#wga.hu/frames-e.html?/legal.html|title=Copyright issues related to entirety of the database and to the particular reproductions displayed on the website|website=Web Gallery of Art|access-date=2018-11-25}}
Very little information is given on the pages presenting the images, as to who the legal owner of each might be. In the United States, photo reproductions of public domain two-dimensional art are also in the public domain, as affirmed by the decision in the case of Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., but this is not the case for photo reproductions of three-dimensional art such as sculptures. Copyrights of the sculpture images therefore remain unclear. Copyrights of the text on the website are also unclear; most of the reproductions in the gallery are displayed as catalog items unaccompanied by any explanatory text, but short explanatory notes for artist biographies or important artworks do exist and are unreferenced.
Database
File:WGA - number of artworks per period.jpg
{{further|List of artists in the Web Gallery of Art (A–K)|List of artists in the Web Gallery of Art (L–Z)|List of sculptors in the Web Gallery of Art|List of graphic artists in the Web Gallery of Art}}
Their database with over 48,600 artworks created by over 4,000 artists is free to download and they have published statistics over their virtual collection that are on their statistics webpage.According to their statistics page in January 2013, all artworks are dated between 1001 and 1900. Artworks installed in churches and from private collections are represented as well as museums. What follows is a list of institutions with more than 50 works represented on their website, based on their downloadable database.
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{Commons category|Web Gallery of Art}}
- {{Official website|https://www.wga.hu/}}
{{authority control}}
Category:Virtual art museums and galleries
Category:Tertiary educational websites
Category:Websites about digital media