National Treasures, Public Access and the Availability of Museum Digital Surrogates: VENUE CHANGE

This session will consider part of Vittoria’s PhD research into the legal and cultural creation of objects of national significance, or ‘national treasures’. When these objects are created as such, and enter public museum institutions in the UK, how far is access to them restricted, and what are the justifications in place for such restriction on access for objects that have been determined to be of public interest?

Vittoria posits one of the three criteria (the Waverley Criteria) under which these objects are assessed for national treasure status as an intellectual property value; this discussion will centre around the notion that public access protection should be a requirement for the fulfilment of the public interest in the object. Is the public domain—in this case, specifically the public domain for national treasures—properly governed by the current regulations?

The discussion will also consider the notion of ‘digital surrogates’, and draws on the work of Andrea Wallace in particular, regarding digital reproductions of cultural objects. Given that much cultural consumption now takes place in digital form—through the use of digital collections on museum websites, for example—is access to these surrogates a sufficient substitute for access to the original objects? And what happens when the institutions in question utilise IP to restrict access even to these surrogates themselves?

Please note this session will be in-person only.