prometheus is a distributed digital image archive that currently makes more than 3,496,000 images of over 120 databases from institutes, research facilities and museums researchable on a common user interface.
Situated at the Institute of Art History of the University of Cologne, prometheus is supported by the non-profit association prometheus e.V. which promotes the ongoing developments of the digital media for science and research.
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We occasionally receive inquiries from your community asking whether we can grant permission to publish one of the images in prometheus in a publication or on a publicly accessible website. We always have to decline these requests, as prometheus itself does not hold any image rights.
But we support you in obtaining these permissions.
First of all, we have general information on image rights and the use of images in prometheus published on our website. Then, directly next to the image (on the left), you will find a link (§) to the image rights of the selected image.
There you can click to access information on the image rights of the respective artwork (1.a.), of the respective photograph (1.b.), on the image credit (2.), and on the image database from which the work originates in the archive – including instructions on how, with whom, and where to clarify publication rights.
If the usage rights are, for example, held by VG Bild-Kunst, you will find the direct link in the field “Image Rights”.
If the paragraph symbol has an asterisk (§), then you can obtain the publication permission directly via a link, as in our example of “Evening Return” from the image database “bpk – Image Portal of Art Museums, Image Agency for Art, Culture and History, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, Berlin”. Indicate what kind of publication you intend to use the image for, fill out the form, and submit it.
In some cases, you do not need permission to publish images. Public domain works are no longer protected under copyright law. This also applies to works under the Creative Commons Zero license. In some cases, it is requested that when reproducing such images, the artist, title, date, and institution are mentioned in the caption – for example, for images from ‘The Art Institute of Chicago’.
… and for presentations in lectures, talks, or lesson preparation, as well as for use in research and teaching, you may freely use the images in the archive. For this purpose, we have concluded a contract with VG Bild-Kunst, which also permits the inclusion of the images in prometheus by the various image databases.
