How to contribute
Please do not email to request
All I have is already available online, so if you can't read it around, I don't have it!
Please direct your questions instead to the appropriate organizations (museums, art information services, etc.) or Usenet newsgroups.
There is now an amazing amount of information available freely over the Internet, including Encyclopaedias, where you can search for more information:
Email with generic questions about art, artists and artworks will be
silently ignored.
Example of such "homework" emails, received 8 Aug 2002:
Please send me more information on Michelangelo Buonarroti...
For the same reasons, please do not ask me to identify or appraise artworks you've found in your attic, as I have no competency or qualifications whatsoever for this.
If you'd like to buy a print of a specific artwork, the first place I would suggest is the shop of the museum where the artwork is located. This may also support financially the museum in order to offer more services to the public or acquire more artworks.
In France, the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN) is a national institution operating industrial and commercial activities derived from the French Museums to raise and administer the funds required for the acquisition of works of art by national collections. Its online store is accessible at www.museesdefrance.com and provides a complete range of commercial services.
Periodically, I am getting emails from people or institutions (including the USA government national endowment for the arts and humanities agency!) asking me to sign and return incomprehensible legalese documents so that they can re-use the WebMuseum documents.
Sorry, but... I have invested thousands of hours into building this collection, and I make my work available for free over the Internet already. What else do you need ? Why would I sign incomprehensible legalese documents, that not only would not provide me any benefit, but instead could actually backfire when I least expect it ?
Also, these documents are usually subject to some foreign law and jurisdiction, such as USA laws. Being neither a USA citizen nor resident, I have absolutely no reason to submit to such a foreign jurisdiction.
In other words, the only thing you will ever get is the
WebMuseum Copyright and License Agreement.
Any email request asking me to sign any legal document will be silently
ignored.
For the same reasons, please do not send email asking for authorization to copy, redistribute, modify, aggregate or translate WebMuseum documents -- as this is explicitly authorized under the terms and conditions of the WebMuseum Copyright and License Agreement.
Feel free to send me mail when you notice weaknesses, typos or errors in my texts. Remember that French is my mother tongue, so I may be using lots of English expressions which are not idiomatic. Also, sometimes artworks are mis-attributed or mis-identified, so if you are absolutely, positively certain of such a mistake please report it via email!
Contributions: If you have interesting material to contribute, drop me a note! This could be extra pictures, biographies... almost anything. According to the International Berne Copyright treaty, works whose authors have been dead for over 50 years are now in the public domain -- this subject is detailed in great length on the Copyright laws around the world page. The only remaining copyright is the photographer's copyright -- and if the photograph depicts nothing but the artistic work and is indistinguishable from other photographs, it is unlikely there is any. Thus, if you took interesting photographs and agree to transfer your photographer's rights to the WebMuseum, those pictures can appear here.
Historical note: between 1996 and 2002 I have removed any reference to my email address on the web due to the vast amounts of junk mail I was getting. I made a new email address available in August 2002, and as of August 2006, I've had to change it again to evade spam.
Due to the amount of mail I am getting, I will probably not be able to respond to you individually -- replying to each email would use up too much of my free time, which is best invested into developing the WebMuseum further instead. However, rest assured that every single piece of email that manages to get through the anti-spam barrage mentionned above will be read. I will do my best to try to collect this mailbox at least once per month.
Emails will be read -- however you will most probably not get an individual response.
To reveal the WebMuseum feedback email address as of August 2006, check the box to indicate you have read and fully understand the instructions above and click on the Reveal button. JavaScript must be enabled in your web browser.
Please do not re-publish this address on the web, Usenet newsgroups or mailing lists (including private ones, which often get archived on the web), as it would ultimately be collected and added to databases used by spam junk mailers and I would have to change it once again. The latest and current WebMuseum contact email address is always available on http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/about/contribs.html and I anticipate I will have to change it every few years, so please redirect enquiring people to this web page instead.
Any idea to improve the WebMuseum is always welcome.
I appreciate your support!
-- Nicolas Pioch