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Re:Louvre makes its entire collection available online by mytailorisrich on Saturday March 27, 2021 @06:05AM (#26601223)
The works themselves are all in the public domain, apart perhaps from rare exceptions.

So my understanding is that it is the photographs of those works that are copyrighted. In my view it goes against the spirit of public domain to use this in order to restrict the use of the collections put online.

Re:Louvre makes its entire collection available online by WORLD_ENDS_SOON on Saturday March 27, 2021 @02:13PM (#26604176)
In the United States a photograph of a public domain 2D image is still also public domain if the photograph is considered a faithful reproduction of the public domain 2D image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgeman_Art_Library_v._Corel....

However, I think the laws for this vary quite a bit across countries, and in many countries the photograph is considered a new copyright work. In general it's pretty frustrating how many legal barriers there are to accessing and reusing old works of art. Thankfully a growing number of museums have made things easy with clear copyright releases (Rijksmuseum, Paris Musées, the MET), but others seem more interested in preserving their ability to sell prints.