color slides for teaching art history

Color Slides for Teaching Art HistoryAuthor(s): Patricia SloaneSource: Art Journal, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Spring, 1972), pp. 276-280Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/775517 .

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Color Slides For Teaching Art History Patricia Sloane

Among several experiences with inadequate color slides, two remain most strongly in my mind. While delivering a lecture on Rembrandt's use of color, I found that the Rembrandt slides owned by my school-I had neglected to check out the slides previously-had somehow faded from whatever color they had been

originally to a murky Prussian blue. One way of using Prussian blue slides of Rem- brandt paintings is to preface each slide shown by explaining to students that the slide seems to be a bit off-color. Another approach is to conclude that if one is go- ing to have to lecture with Prussian blue Rembrandt slides, it might be preferable to drop the whole idea and not talk about Rembrandt at all.

Somewhat later during the year when this occurred, I ran into a different sort of problem in connection with slides for a lecture on Cubism. The only slide of Pi- casso's work which my school owned at the time was the Portrait of Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein is an unpromising painting to talk around if students are supposed to be edified about the nature of Picasso's contribution to Cubism.

Shortly after these and other equally exasperating experiences, I began to buy, beg, steal and photograph whatever 35 mm. color slides I needed for use in my classes. The expense was not minimal, but was not overwhelming either. As so many teachers have found, given the present dismal state of affairs with so many art de- partment color slide collections (and with color slides in general), a personal slide collection can be one sane solution. It provides the teacher with freedom to build classes around the art works he thinks ought to be discussed, and frees him from dependence on whatever miscel- lany of slides happens to be available. If many college slide collections are inadequate this is partly the fault of the schools, and the result of haphazard methods of ordering slides. Partly it is on ac- count of other factors.

Most of my personal complaints about color slides fall into one of three catego- ries. First, slide companies and museums

PATRICIA SLOANE is a painter, and the author of Color: Basic Principles and New Directions. She teaches aft history at New York City Community College of the City University of New York. U

often use poor judgment about the particular works which ought to be photographed. New York's Metropolitan Mu- seum, with a large collection of Cypriote art, has available not one single slide of anything in the Cypriote collection. Simi- larly the Met owns hundreds-perhaps thousands-of Greek vases but has taken color photographs of only one or two. By comparison the British Museum, with a greatly superior photographic program, has available two hundred and ninety-two slides of Greek vases in their collection. Surely this is not because either the vase collection or the budget at the British Museum is two hundred times as large as that at the Met. Probably it has nothing whatever to do with simple economics, or with the cost of photographing art works. For two hundred and ninety-two 35 mm. color slides the cost of film and developing is less than $54.00. As for the cost of labor, the Metropolitan Museum (like most museums) retains a staff photographer.

Currently the Met's slides are produced by General Aniline and Film, an independent vendor. The Met either does not have, or does not care to exercise, very much control in regard to which works are photographed. GAF Pana-Vue slides can be purchased from the Met for about sixty cents or from GAF for about eighty five cents. GAF also produces sets of slides showing tourist attractions of various cit- ies. These are sold in railroad stations and gift shops throughout the United States. These sets of souvenir color slides- for example, six views of Denver, Colo- rado-are priced at about twenty-five cents per slide. Their quality is in every way equal to that of GAF's color slides of art works and they are produced by the same process. There seems to be no reason whatever for the differential in price except that GAF's slides of art works are priced according to what the market will bear. The Ringling Museum sells slides apparently produced by GAF since (like the Met's slides) they are labelled "Pana- Vue." The Ringling Museum sells them for about twenty-five cents apiece. Simi- larly erratic mark-ups can be seen in San- dak slides, available for $1.25 from San- dak, and at fifty to sixty cents from some museums.

A second problem, applying particularly to slides of sculpture and architecture, is that poor judgment is used about how photographs ought to be composed and taken. Sculpture should be properly lighted, and photographed from several views. Bronzes, if not lighted with special care, tend to photograph as black blobs within which detail cannot be distin- guished. Most slides of sculpture are

taken from too far away; wien the slide is projected the sculpture does not occupy a sufficiently large area of the screen, nor is sufficient detail visible. Many vendors and museums routinely assume (and have not been notified otherwise) that a single frontal view of a piece of sculpture is sufficient. Some provide mechanical photos of a front view, back view and-occasionally -a three-quarters view. Most sculptors who photograph their own work produce slides with a great deal more sense of style than is seen in sculpture slides available from museums and vendors. Some sort of prize for poor photographic composition should probably be awarded to the slides of sculpture produced under the auspices of UNESCO.

The matter of sensitivity to the art work is also relevant in regard to slides of paintings. Slides of work by Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painters tend to be too blurred to show the manner of paint application. Close-up views of small por- tions of the painting might be helpful but are seldom available.

Slides of architecture are even more un- satisfactory than those of sculpture, and for similar reasons. No student can be ex- pected to get an adequate idea of Char- tres Cathedral from three slides of it. Thirty to fifty should be available. With a few happy exceptions individual vendors are not prepared to supply a large number of views of a single piece of architecture. One real find is the Bodleian Li- brary which has available-for example- sixty-eight color slides of the mosaics at S. Apollinaire Nuovo. The slides cost about four cents apiece.

The third major problem with slides is that vendors use poor judgment in utiliz-

ing existing technological (i.e., photographic) capabilities. In other words there seems to be widespread ignorance about how 35 mm. color slides ought to be reproduced for quantity distribution. If so many commercial vendors continue to sell slides of poor photographic quality this is not necessarily because it costs more money to produce better slides. More likely it is because slide vendors deal with consumers-art historians and art history departments-who are not sufficiently discriminating to demand higher quality, or not sufficiently sophisticated about photographic techniques to under- stand where the difficulties lie. In the case of 35 mm. color slides cost is seldom an index to quality. The National Gallery in Washington sells very good slides for thirty-five cents each. The Philadelphia Museum, rip-off magnate of the world of color slides, makes extremely bad copies of slides from the National Gallery (and from other museums as well) and sells

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them for a dollar. The Philadelphia Mu- seum should be pressured to discontinue the selling of slides which not only are poor and over-priced, but which probably can be described as pirated. I do not believe any major museum has merchan- dised quite so shoddy a product since the days when the Metropolitan used to sell stamps printed with reproductions of art works for little children to lick and paste into stamp books.

The cost of reproducing a color slide is approximately twenty-five to thirty cents, and drops sharply for reproduction in quantity. Anything above that is profit to the vendor. Since the price of slides can range upwards to two and three dollars apiece, vendors vary widely in the profit margin they prefer.

The best, as well as the most economi- cal, source of slides is museums, which photograph works of art in their own collections. High quality slides can be purchased at prices (depending on the museum) ranging from about twenty cents up to about seventy five cents. Fifty cents seems to be about average, and is less than half of the price typically charged by commercial vendors. Like the Philadel- phia Museum, some commercial slide companies do not make their slides from works of art. Instead their activities are limited to producing inadequate copies of museum slides; these copies often sell for a higher price than is available at the museum from which the slide is pirated. Some of the bad slides which are sold are bad because they are neither photographed from the original art work nor duplicated from master slides taken from the art work. Instead, they are duplicates of duplicate museum slides or-even worse -are photographed from reproductions in books. With an important exception I shall discuss later in this paper, increased gener- ation in the duplication of color slides leads to inferior slides. A duplicate of a duplicate slide is inferior to a duplicate slide. And a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate can be unbelievably bad.

One New York vendor, whose slides are notoriously atrocious, uses two sources to produce them. Some are photographed from books, in lieu of the preferred method of obtaining the slide from which the reproduction in the book was made. His other source is teachers of art history who own slides. For instructors willing to contribute to visual pollution in slide production, this vendor pays seventy five cents per slide for the privilege of reproducing slides which are owned by individual teachers. The slide from which the copies are made is then returned to its owner. The difficulty with this method is that the vendor is continually working

from slides which are usually not origi- nals, which have been frequently projected, and which are often somewhat scratched or faded. Sometimes the slides he copies are mounted under glass, although copying a slide which is mounted under glass seems to be a surefire way of obtaining a degraded visual image. The point is not that this vendor produces bad slides by using inadequate procedures, but that he stays in business despite the poor quality of his merchandise. One is forced to conclude that too many schools are willing to buy bad slides even though less inadequate ones are available.

Convenience seems to motivate some art departments in their purchases of slides. Ordering five hundred slides from a single vendor is more convenient than ordering five hundred slides from thirty different museums. Convenience can be an expensive indulgence, and in this case can mean purchasing poorer slides at a higher cost. Vendors with enormous selec- tions of slides not infrequently are only purveying badly made copies of museum slides at inflated prices. While it is not an ideal solution, it might be preferable if these vendors could be persuaded to pur- chase large quantities of slides from the museums and resell them-if this cannot be avoided-at a price mark-up. A worth- while and inexpensive project for the College Art Association might be collect- ing price lists from all museums which sell slides, indexing and mimeographing these lists, and making the compilations available at cost to schools which buy slides.* If we intend to demand quality, then there is no room for vendors who sell duplicates made from museum slides or who photograph reproductions in books. Ideally the function of the independent vendor should be to photograph -in the museums-art works which the museums have not photographed.

Amateurish production methods are not limited to the manufacture of art history color slides. Similar naivete is routine in the production of film strips and movies dealing with art. Recently the Na- tional Gallery gave the American Federa- tion of Arts a quarter of a million dollars to make art appreciation films for elemen- tary school children. Almost everything wrong with these films-and almost everything is wrong with them-finally traces back to the fact that the AFA had no experience whatever in a project of this sort, and was apparently disinclined to put together a competent staff of advisors with relevant experience. My opinion of the AFA would have gone up considera- bly if they had refused the money and in-

* The Art Dept., U.C. Santa Barbara, has done this. List sells for $7.50.

sisted that it be turned over to more qualified persons; but such things are apparently not done. Some of the art works shown in the AFA films are badly off- color, and I am told on excellent authority that art works were sometimes photographed from reproductions in books. Two preferred alternatives exist. One is to photograph from the actual art work. If the project had had the benefit of advice from a qualified art historian, certain substitutions would probably have been suggested. A MAodigliani painting in a New York museum (which could easily be photographed directly) might have been substituted for a Modigliani painting in an out of town museum which the camera crew could not visit. If the project had had the benefit of advice from anyone ex- perienced in photographing or filming art works, an alternative technical procedure might have been suggested for those in- stances in which there was a specific de- sire to show a work not available for photographing. This alternative insures better quality and, probably, less expense than photographing from books. A slide taken from the art work might have been procured from the museum which owned the art work. The slide might have been turned over to any of several optical houses which specialize in transferring slide images to movie film.

Museums commonly use either of two techniques when photographing slides. In the first method, a camera is set up before an art work and a large quantity of slides is photographed from that particular art work. Slides produced by this method are known as original slides, since each is a unique photograph individually taken from the art work.

In the second method a single master slide is taken from the original art work. Later, the required number of duplicate slides is produced by rephotographing this original. Slides produced by this second method are known as duplicate slides, since each is produced from the master slide, not from the original art work. Often, but not always, original slides cost more than slides which are duplicates. This is partly because of the greater amount of labor involved. Labor and time costs might be reduced to almost nothing in the production of original slides (and savings on processing could also be achieved) if a 35 mm. movie camera were adapted to take a rapid succes- sion of original slides. I do not know if any museum has tried this. In large part the higher cost of original slides has something to do with the popular fable-and the wholely fallacious belief-that original slides are necessarily superior to duplicates. Original slides from the National

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Gallery in London cost about sixty cents while those from the Brooklyn Museum cost $1.30. In either case the cost of film and developing is about fifteen cents per slide, which makes the Brooklyn Museum's price seem somewhat exploi- tive. Slides from European museums usually cost less than those from American museums even though-oddly-they are often made on Kodak film which costs more in Europe than in this country.

One reason original slides have acquired a reputation for superiority is that in practice many things often go wrong (and unnecessarily so) in the process of manufacturing duplicates. Suppose an original 35 mm. color slide is sent to East- man Kodak, and they are asked to make duplicates. Almost invariably the duplicate slides vary in color from the original and are inferior to it. This is far from a technologically insurmountable problem, and Eastman Kodak deserves a slap on the wrist for the type of hack work they routinely turn out. As anyone who has made 16 mm. movies knows, it is possible to replicate color film so that the duplicate prints are equal to, or even superior to, the original. The problem seems to be that the appropriate techniques are not ordinarily used in the reproduction of color slides although they are commonly employed in the reproduction of colored movie films. This is an important point since color slides and colored movie films are both made on the same film stock and are developed by using the same processes and chemicals. In other words, thirty-five millimeter movie film is sold in rolls of 100 to 1200 foot length for use in movie cameras. The same film is cut to shorter lengths (approximately five feet) for use in still cameras which take 35 mm. color slides. Therefore an easy way exists to gauge the level of quality which ought to be available with color slides using presently available technologies: The quality of color reproduction in duplicate slides ought to be as good as that which is routinely achieved in prints of color movies. But of course this level is not usually reached. Many vendors (and also some museums) sell color slides which are badly off-color, and which may be (1) greenish, (2) brownish, (3) purplish, or (4) predominantly red and blue with a loss of yellow tone. These extremes of poor color quality are not found in movies, probably because film producers and editors refuse to accept slipshod production techniques and demand higher standards.

Several techniques exist which could improve the quality of color slides, but which are seldom used. One is the employment of an internegative. The in-

ternegative is a color negative which is made from the master slide. Negative to positive prints are made from the internegative, in lieu of making reversal prints from the master slide. Corrections in exposure and color (through the use of gel- atin filters) can be made between the master slide, internegative and duplicate prints. This process is often used in printing 16 mm. movies and gives very satisfactory results at a reasonable cost. A further advantage of the internegative is that it saves excessive wear on the master slide. By comparison to manufacturers of color slides, film makers are particularly careful about avoiding wear and tear on their original film. Some follow the practice of never projecting original movie film (and of reserving it for the production of prints) in order to avoid minute scratches on the film surface as well as fading and other damage which might degrade the quality of prints. This degree of fastidi- ousness is not characteristic of museums and other slide vendors, where practices range from the casual to the slovenly. I placed an order with the Metropolitan Museum for a color slide of Rembrandt's Old Woman Paring Her Nails. The Met informed me that the order would be de- layed until their master slide had been returned from the rental service, where it was being regularly loaned out and continually projected. The duplicate which the museum finally made me from their presumably faded and battered master slide was predictably and inexcusably bad and cost me-if I remember rightly-about $3.00. Master slides do not belong in a rental collection, partly because they fade with repeated projections and partly because adequate duplicates cannot be made from slides mounted under glass. Another appropriate project for the CAA might be the preparation of a list of standards for color slide production, which could include information about reccommended technical procedures. Distributing this list to museums and other vendors could be a useful form of self-protection. This ap- plies not only to the production of color slides but also the production of 8 X 10" black-and-white photos. For example, Per- sian manuscript illuminations often photograph beautifully in color but badly in black-and-white because most of their col- ors are rather close in value. Institutions owning and selling photos of Persian manuscripts-the Edinburgh Library, for example-seem unfamiliar with the use of color filters which could improve their black-and-white photos.

Another technique seldom employed in the production of color slides is negative to positive printing, which was-and perhaps still is-used by Sandak. In this pro-

cedure the film taken from the original art work is negative rather than reversal. It can be used to make negative to positive slides as well as negative to positive black-and-white prints. There is no particular reason that adequate 35 mm. duplicate color slides cannot be made through the use of negative film, a process which is standard in the production of 35 mm. movies. Quality can be improved still further if negative film is used in a camera with a format larger than thirty-five millimeter. I have seen excellent and extremely detailed slides made with slightly oversize negatives taken on a Hasselblad camera. Thirty-five millimeter slides were printed from these negatives with a reduc- tion in size during the printing process.

It is not my intention here to develop an exhaustive critique of the technology used in manufacturing color slides for quantity distribution. But several articles could be, and probably ought to be, written on the topic. To my mind a great part of the overall difficulty with color slides has more to do with the dissemina- tion of information than with problems of money or budget. Art historians ought to know enough about photographic processes to recognize what goes wrong when bad slides are produced. They ought to know-as many commercial photographers do not know-what some of the special problems are in photographing works of art. They ought to complain to those vendors who produce an inferior product. A grading system ought to be developed for evaluating slides; vendors (along with museums) ought to be notified about which of their slides are not satisfactory. We ought to draw on the resources of those museums-for examples, the British Museum or the Stedelijk-which produce high quality slides at low cost. Doubtless these institutions would not be reluctant to share information about their procedures with other museums that have less satisfactory photographic programs.

Some art historians and artists photograph their own slides, either regularly or occasionally. The cost of doing this is minimal; a color slide taken with a 35 mm. camera costs about fifteen cents.* Many excellent and otherwise unavailable slides are in the hands of individuals who have made the slides primarily for their own use. Joe Steffanelli has the best slides I've ever seen of a large number of Egyp- tian tomb paintings. Kenneth Campbell has dozens of fine slides of Stonehenge and of the armour in the Metropolitan Mu- seum. The late Ad Reinhardt had an enormous and well-known collection of slides of Oriental art. Slides taken by indi- * See "On Making Color Slides in Art Museums" Lester Bridaham, in ART JOURNAL, Winter 71/72.

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viduals represent an untapped resource. The stock of available slides could probably be quadrupled if intelligent use were made of this resource. Perhaps internega- tives might be made from slides taken by individuals, after which the original slide could be returned to its owner. Individu- als who make slides available could either be paid a royalty or-this involves less bookkeeping-a flat fee of from five to ten dollars per slide. Precautions ought to be taken to insure that the slide is not worn or scratched at the time the internegative is made.

But taking one's own slides is no com- plete solution to the problem of obtaining adequate slides. Photographing architecture and outdoor sculpture is very easy to do, and yields happy results with a decent camera. But photographing in museums is very often a disaster, and unnecessarily frustrating because of the obstreper- ous stance adopted by museums. For example, some rooms at the Metropolitan are illuminated partly by artificial light, partly by daylight from windows. No available camera film is adjusted for this mixed lighting. The proper way to photograph in a room of this sort is to either cover the windows (and use artificial light film) or turn off the electric lights (and use daylight film). Museum bureaucracies being what they are, few institutions are geared for compliance with any request that the electric lights in some particular room be turned off for about ten seconds.

Some museums are so dimly lit that color photos can only be taken with a time exposure. This requires use of a tripod. Lighting conditions of this sort are usually found in museums which do not allow use of a tripod. Perhaps this is just as well since long time exposures are not recommended with most camera films except with elaborate filtration. The solution here is for the photographer to bring along lights, except that most museums do not permit this.

Many paintings in museums cannot be photographed at all since they are mounted high up on the wall, much above eye level. From any vantage point on the floor the painting will photograph in the shape of a parallelogram, rather than a rectangle. A solution in some cases is for the photographer to stand on a chair; but this is not permitted. It is often impossible to photograph oil paintings in museums because ceiling spot-lights cause glare on the painting. The solution is to turn off the spot light, which is not permitted.

One possible solution to the illumina- tion problem is electronic flash, often a useful aid in poor lighting conditions. It is less useful when photographing art

works in public museums since electronic flash yields poor results on any object with a shiny surface. And the majority of art works have shiny surfaces. Electronic flash causes glare spots on paintings and also on Greek vases, although the surface of the vases looks comparatively matte to the eye. When used to photograph sculpture it is totally inadequate since it elimi- nates all shadows and makes the work look flat and silhouette-like. Electronic flash is useful in photographing Oriental rugs or any other object which (1) is not three dimensional, (2) is not shiny, and (3) is not enclosed in a glass case. A min- iscule proportion of the objects in museums meet all three of these qualifications.

To make a long story short, the lighting conditions in museums-usually not opti- mal for viewing art works-are typically abysmal for color photography. I do not mean photos cannot be taken. But the photographing ought to be done in ac- companiment with much finger-crossing and praying. One solution is to seek permission to photograph in the museum during hours when it is not open to the public. Hopefully at such a time a glaring spot light might be switched off for a moment, or supplementary lights might be brought in to illuminate a piece which is badly lit.

In effect such permission is unobtaina- ble. Some institutions, like the Brooklyn Museum, simply say no. Brooklyn's re- fusal seems unnecessarily arbitrary since at the present time parts of the museum are regularly closed to the public in order to conserve funds. At the Metropolitan permission is unavailable unless a rather large-prohibitive-amount of money changes hands. The Met's charge is $35.00 per hour. Although the Met is a city insti- tution and I teach at a branch of the City University, no waiving of the fee is possible even on request from my school. The charge is described by the Met as neces- sary in order to "pay the salary" of a museum guard assigned to watch the photographer to insure that no art works are mutilated or stolen while photographs are being taken. I am inclined to view the $35.00 per hour as a put-on, designed to discourage requests for permission to photograph. At least it does not seem extreme to suggest that the salary of guards at the Metropolitan is closer to $35.00 per week than to $35.00 per hour. Certainly less paranoid ways exist for the Met to screen applicants and protect their collection. If I wanted to steal or mutilate an art work, I doubt I would go to the trouble of giv- ing the Metropolitan my name, address and place of employment. There seems to be very little risk that an art work might be mutilated by anyone teaching art his-

tory in any of the New York City colleges. Assuming that never-the-less the Metro- politan has a right to worry, I believe I would prefer posting bond to paying $35.00 per hour. And, for that matter, I believe I would be willing to pay a guard's salary except that I suspect it is something under five dollars an hour and not thirty-five.

Most museums are reasonably decent about accommodating hoards of amateur photographers and tourists who want to take snap-shots. Cameras can be brought in to most museums by anyone willing to take not-very-good photographs under not-very-good lighting conditions. For anyone who wants to take anything approaching professional photographs under anything approaching professional conditions, it is quite another matter and the museums seem to be wholly intract- able.

I do not mean to imply that anyone using slides ought to undertake to photograph his own. But sometimes this can be a useful solution in an otherwise impossible situation. Or at least it could be if the museums were less inflexible. I teach a course in African art, for which my school has too few slides and too little money to buy more. A goodly amount of African art is locally available at the Museum of Primitive Art andi the Brooklyn Museum. The Museum of Primitive Art has available only fifteen slides of the works in their collection, and several of these are off-color. Both museums favor a style of lighting somewhat reminiscent of a harem at midnight, with darkened rooms provid- ing about the visibility of an upper east side cocktail lounge. It is inadequate lighting for color photography. Currently works from the Primitive Museum are on display at the Metropolitan, where the lighting is somewhat better. Unfortu- nately the Met forbids any photographing whatever of the African pieces. Originally I intended to take about two hundred slides of African pieces in local museums, which would have solved the immediate problem of slides for my class. The main barrier to carrying out this project has been museum red tape.

What this means is more far-reaching than any personal inconvenience to me. The museums make it almost entirely im- practical for any independent photographer to photograph the works in their collections. Suppose an independent vendor decided to photograph the Cypriote collection at the Metropolitan Museum, in order to sell slides. At a charge of thirty- five dollars an hour the project could become economically unfeasible. At least the Met's charges would be passed along in the cost of the slides. Any independent

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vendor of color slides willing to photograph the collections at the Metropolitan Museum ought to be allowed-even en- couraged-to do so at no charge whatever. In plain fact the vendor would be per- forming a public service, not only to art historians and schools but also to the museum; slides would be made available of works not previously photographed.

This touches on the sticky problem of the right to photograph works of art. Most museums operate on the assumption that the owner of a work of art also owns the reproduction rights to it. In practical terms this means that a museum will not permit photographs to be taken of works on loan to it; the belief is that the right to grant permission to take photographs rests with the owner of the work. Very often this means that permission will not be granted to take any photographs whatever of a major exhibition which includes many works on loan. Without presuming to pass on the legal niceties, I am inclined to wonder about the authority upon which this position is based.** The law currently states that reproduction rights to a work of art are separate from the work itself and may or may not be con- veyed by the artist at the time of sale. In other words reproduction rights in a work of art belong first to the artist, and after- wards to whomever acquires them from him. By whatever authority the museums claim reproduction rights to works in their collections this is surely not because these rights were specifically acquired from Courbet or Praxiteles. A legal inter- pretation might be welcome in regard to whether or not art works more than sixty years old (like books more than sixty years old) are in the public domain. In other words it may be that anyone has the right to photograph a Rembrandt for the same reason that Dover Press has the right to print copies of old books.

Even if older art works are in the public domain, the museums might still pre- vent their being photographed by the simple device of refusing to permit cameras to be brought on to museum premises; this is somewhat different from issuing prohibitions about photographing particular works of art. In turn a move of this sort could raise the question of whether or not museums are public places, and whether photography can be arbitrarily prohibited in public places.

Along a similar line, the copyright situation in regard to slides and photographs of art works is by no means clear. Rou- tinely museums and vendors require that their permission be obtained before any of their slides or photos are copied or re-

** See "Rights of Artists: The Case of the Droit de Suite," by Monroe E. Price and Aimge Brown Price, in ART JOURNAL, Winter 71/72, p. 144-Ed.

produced in books. In other words they act as if they owned a copyright, if not in the work of art, then at least in the photograph. A photograph can be copyrighted, just as it ;s possible to copyright a transla- tion of a work which itself is in the public domain. But in fact virtually all slides presently in circulation have not been copyrighted. Presumably they are not even eligible for copyright: The law states that if copies of a work are sold without obtaining copyright at the time of first publication, the right to obtain copyright is irrevocably lost. In other words, museums and others who sell copies of slides without obtaining copyright in the photographs at the time of initial sale lose for- ever the right to obtain any copyright at all; the work-in this case the photograph -passes into the public domain and can be used by anybody in any way he chooses. It might be a good idea to dis- pense with the empty formality of permis- sions if-and I suspect this is true-virtually all slides and photographs presently in circulation in fact are in the public domain. In turn this might open the way to a discussion of whether or not the copyright law ought to be amended to provide a more feasible means of protection for color slides. The six dollar charge for obtaining copyright can become prohibitive if several thousand slides are involved and each must be copyrighted individually.

The rights museums abrogate to them- selves in regard to the reproduction of art works are less often extended to living artists, whose right is more well defined. One vendor sells color slides of works ex- hibited at the Chicago Art Institute in the various exhibitions of American painting and sculpture held over a ten year period. As nearly as I can determine, he neither sought permission from, nor pays royalties to, any of the artists whose work he photographed. Any amending of the copyright law to provide a more reasonable form of protection for the vendor of color slides would perpetrate a great injustice if it did not also include some provision for royalties to living artists.

I have touched in this article on a great variety of points which, regrettably, it has not been possible to pursue more thor- oughly. My main aim has been to counter the commonplace belief that whatever is wrong with color slides can be cured by massive infusions of money, whether in the form of subsidized slide production or in the form of grants to colleges to buy slides. Money alone is likely to solve nothing unless headway can be made in clearing up the confusion which surrounds the production and distribution of color slides. The CAA is uniquely qualified to serve as a central clearing house. Many

marginal producers of color slides are just plain incompetent. It is enlightened self- service, rather than altruism, for the CAA to compile and make publicly available technical information about producing color slides and photographing art works. In addition a central listing ought to be compiled-and, hopefully, computerized- of the slides which are presently available. As a supplement to this listing recommen- dations could be distributed to vendors notifying them of the wreas in which there are very few slides. At the moment there are too many slides of the Venus de Milo and not enough of Etruscan Sculpture, Puerto Rican painting or Russian architecture. Finally the major museums should be pressured to take either one of two courses. They ought to make color slides of more of the works in their collections or else make these collections more available-without inflated charges and bureaucratic complications-to independent vendors willing to do the job. This last alternative need not be complicated at all. It might involve, for example, clos- ing the Metropolitan Museum to the public two days out of the year. On those two days photography could be permitted in the museum by employees of slide vend- ing companies as well as others involved in the use or distribution of color slides. On these days permission might be granted for the use of supplementary lights and other specialized equipment brought in by photographers. Guards ought to be available to turn off badly placed spotlights or to draw curtains over windows.

A grading system should also be estab- lished. Vendors and museums ought to be rated on the quality of their slides, either dealing with individual slides or with collections as a whole. This grading system might provide some guidance for colleges which, more often than not, have to buy slides sight unseen.

Sir: The article is cleverly written, but with

most inadequate information. And I believe it is damaging to the two museums she most severely and wrongly criticizes.

If you publish this article, please at least add that the College Art Association Slides and Photographs division has just published a "Slide Buyer's Guide" which should answer most of her pleas for com- plete and evaluated listings of commercial slide dealers and museums that sell their own slides. Available from me for $1.00.

Nancy de Laurier University of Missouri at Kansas City

Miss Sloane replies that she will stand bv the statements in her article.

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color slides for teaching art history

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