Intellectual Property Rights and the Road to Quality Museums
May 18, 2020
This International Museum Day, among other things, represents the celebration of an effective public platform for local artists and also the nation’s cultural heritage. Presently, museums are not just spaces where art and science creations are displayed for the visual pleasure of the people; museums have a greater objective of communicating culture and educating the masses, heritage safeguarding through archiving of knowledge, proliferating inspiration, and developing aesthetic sensibilities especially among the youth.
Despite the public and private financial protection that museums receive, a different level of security must be established for both the artist and institution. Traditionally, intellectual property is viewed by museums as a hindrance to the execution of their tasks. It prevents fast reproduction for preservation, educational, and distribution purposes which are all in line with the objectives of the museum. It also lengthens the means by which a museum carries out programs, meaning, additional administrative and policy-level arrangements must be done by the museum in order to stay in the line of intellectual property protection.
For Rina Elster Pantalony, Director of Copyright Services at Columbia University, intellectual property rights is a crucial characteristic of a forward-thinking society. It is a part of the creative process of society, and gives contributors the necessary safe space to enact their artistic endeavours without fear of negative personal repercussions. As museums are important instruments of artistic dissemination, it should serve as a bastion for intellectual property rights. In fact, despite the old-fashioned thinking against intellectual property rights and museum operation, the incorporation of proper intellectual property in museum management and artistic pursuit could become the much-needed catalyst for an overall improvement in the generation and display of creative content, among other things.
- National Cultural Heritage Promotion – Sound policies and regulations concerning intellectual property rights protection have proven to be directly correlated to higher economic growth rates. For developing countries such as the Philippines, protecting and networking content generators ought to be a priority even before the actual creation of original works. By ascertaining the protection of copyright, creative minds even in the smallest communities will be heartened to be more productive and innovative. Though it can be imperfect at times, it is still effective in fostering artistic creation. Encouraging the safeguarding of national heritage is a staple of museum mandate and, as such, intellectual property must be championed by museums not only for the benefit of local artists but the nation’s culture in general.
- Effective Organizational Management – According to Stephen E. Weil, museum official and legal expert in the arts, a quality museum is purposeful, capable, effective, and efficient. There are multiple ways to go about this including finding new ways to achieve these supposed goals, such as incorporating technology and addressing issues on behalf of collaborators and artists. Proper management of intellectual property rights can be helpful in all these facets as it can be harnessed not only in an educational manner, it is also an informative and established tool for staff to understand the various institutional liabilities, financial stakes, and necessities in creating a quality museum environment. Additionally, it could be a great resource in database management, inventorying, and auditing.
- Proper Content Commercialization – The success of cultural heritage safeguarding is not measured in economic terms. However, the appropriate capitalization of local art could be a great advantage for the sustenance of a community, individual artist, and the museum itself. Profit generation is not necessarily a bad thing; in fact, it could pave the road to sustainability in places where the question of finances and maintenance is still a large question mark. A museum pursuing this endeavour could very well make use of intellectual property protection, a foolproof way of promoting innovation, protecting artists and art, and shielding unscrupulous acts of financial mismanagement by way of safeguarding artists from copyright infringement.
At the end of the day, support goes both ways, and results appear on both sides too. Though tedious at first, being a champion of intellectual property rights will be appreciated by the institutional framework of the museum and consequently by partner artistic communities, collaborators, and artists.
In the case of the Philippines, local and indigenous artists have existed and practiced their craft from one generation to another. Labeling the Filipino artistic community as ‘flourishing’, on the other hand, is another issue altogether. Also, one cannot say that there is a strong museum culture in the country. Despite this, the influence of the museum as an institution was seen when it implemented permanent free admission in 2016 and the opening of the National Museum of Natural History in 2017. In 2015, the recorded number of visitors was 534,820 but in 2018, a staggering 1,689,007 visited the National Museum complexes in Manila.
The educational and inspiration material showcased by the National Museum of the Philippines have been nothing short of outstanding; for example, the Manlilikha ng Bayan exhibit which features the National Living Treasures awardees. The common theme, however, have always been history and historical artists. By empowering the institution and modern artists through intellectual property protection and management, we may see a brand new national museum for contemporary art. After all, art is infinite yet ever evolving. By featuring what has not yet been featured, museums can help surge the circulation of knowledge locally, nationally, and internationally. ### (Nastasha Erika Floro, Communications and Marketing Writer)
References
Günay, B. (2012). Museum Concept from Past to Present and Importance of Museums as Centers of Art Education. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 1250-1258.
Pambansang Museo. (2016, November 10). 2015 Annual Report. Retrieved May 15, 2020, from National Museum of the Philippines: https://www.nationalmuseum.gov.ph/nationalmuseumbeta/Transparency/2015%20NM%20Annual%20Report.pdf
Pambansang Museo. (2019). 2018 Annual Report. Retrieved May 15, 2020, from National Museum of the Philippines: https://www.nationalmuseum.gov.ph/nationalmuseumbeta/Transparency/FY%202018%20NM%20Annual%20Report%20Final.pdf