Talk:Brookgreen Gardens

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Identification[edit]

I have been unable to identify the following sculpture:

  • Solved. It's one of two Wood Nymphs (this is the other one) by Henry Hering (1874-1949), 1932[1][2] Description in Proske's catalog support this ID.[3] Interestingly, the material is Aluminum.
    Solved. It's one of two Wood Nymphs (this is the other one) by Henry Hering (1874-1949), 1932[1][2] Description in Proske's catalog support this ID.[3] Interestingly, the material is Aluminum.

Can anyone identify this sculpture, its sculptor, and date it? Lupo 09:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have found other photos of this one,[4][5], which identify it as "Pan". There are at least four sculptures at Brookgreen with "Pan" in the title though, so I haven't been sure which one is which. Two are bronze, two are lead. One of the bronze ones mention a flute, another mentions pipes. But maybe this is one of the others. So, still not sure, and have not gotten back to this one. Carl Lindberg (talk) 15:51, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Found him, I think. Lupo 16:24, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, nice. I was thinking it did not look like stone, but it wasn't bronze either. Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:12, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In addition, there is one sculpture that I have been unable to date except "before 1941": Image:Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture16.jpg. It is likely, though, that this is far older. When was it created, and where was it located before being placed in Brookgreen Gardens? Lupo 09:26, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The already deleted Image:Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture5.jpg (deleted in April 2008 as a "presumably modern sculpture, no evidence otherwise") was Black Panther by Wheeler Williams (1897-1972), dated 1933. [6] A second cast is at the Gallery of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Fla.[7] The animal is a female (right foot forward).[8] Other images of this sculpture: [9][10]. Lupo 11:41, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]


One other interesting bit -- Image:Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture24.jpg has a couple of older "revisions" which are actually completely different photographs. One of them was reuploaded as Image:Brookgreen Gardens24.jpg, but the other one is an image of a sculpture not pictured elsewhere (I think this one). Should we re-upload that one, or did the author not mean to upload it? Or should we wait until we sort the 1923-1977/89 stuff out? Carl Lindberg (talk) 17:12, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think he intended to publish it. He had just a minor hiccup when uploading these images. The second upload was later uploaded as Image:Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture24b.jpg and then deleted as a duplicate of Image:Brookgreen Gardens24c.jpg. So I guess re-uploading the Alligator Bender under its own name and licensing it correctly would be OK. I've asked him anyway. Lupo 18:27, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright issues[edit]

IMO the following are clear copyvios:

I presume that 1978 or later sculptures would be unpublished works (no distribution of copies to the general public). Unpublished works didn't need a copyright notice in the U.S. If considered published, I presume 17 USC 405(1) would apply to the 1978-1988 sculptures, even if they didn't bear a copyright notice: these are not mass-produced works, and hence I think "The omission of the copyright notice [...] does not invalidate the copyright in a work if (1) the notice has been omitted from no more than a relatively small number of copies [...]" Since 1989 (adherence of the U.S. to the Berne Convention), the copyright notice on published works is no longer required.

The 1923-1977 sculptures are in limbo for the time being. We have no information about whether they were copyrighted, and if so, whether or not their copyright was renewed. Online renewal catalogs do not cover sculptures. For one sculpture, we know that it was explicitly copyrighted:

Comments? Lupo 09:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  • 1978-1988 statues are also a bit in limbo... determining "publication" is definitely harder, but still may well be published. If the sculptor has a smaller model, or there is another copy, that may well mean that lending or distributing this one to Brookgreen for "public display" may well constitute publication. I don't think 17 USC 405(1) applies... that is only when relatively few copies lack the notice; if something only exists in a few copies, then each copy is a high percentage of the total. I also don't think they would allow a lack of notice on the (by far) most important copy, the one permanently in public. USC 405(2) would apply, but those records are online, so we can search for them (and one would think that a notice would have to have been added to the main public copy). The copyright.gov circular does say that permanent public display does not necessarily mean publication though. This circular goes into more detail on the notice stuff. Some of these statues are clearly still under copyright though. Carl Lindberg (talk) 16:09, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • The more I think about this "publication" thing, the less I understand. Take the Oscar statuette: reproduced countless times on TV, and one can buy plastic replicas, and copies were given to 159 people between 1929 and 1941. Photos were probably published in newspapers during that time, too. The statuettes bore no copyright notice. Is it "published"? Is it PD? No, it isn't. See Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences v. Creative House Promotions, Inc. 944 F.2d 1446 (9th Cir. 1991). Now take Lucchesi's Raphell. Assume it has no notice. Did the placement of the first cast at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, NYC, constitute "publication"? Did making a second copy and placing that at Brookgreen Gardens constitute publication? Lupo 19:13, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Also see H.R. 94-1476, pp. 138 and 144:

"The definition clears up the question of whether the sale of phonorecords constitutes publication, and it also makes plain that any form or dissemination in which a material object does not change hands—performances or displays on television, for example—is not a publication no matter how many people are exposed to the work." (p. 138)

and

"It should be noted that, under the definition of “publication” in section 101, there would no longer be any basis for holding, as a few court decisions have done in the past, that the public display of a work of art under some conditions (e.g., without restriction against its reproduction) would constitute publication of the work. And, as indicated above, the public display of a work of art would not require that a copyright notice be placed on the copy displayed." (p. 144)

I'll do some serious reading next week of a variety of sources I've collected, but it appears to me that this is a very clear indication of the intent of Congress when it passed the 1976 law that statues since 1978 were not "published" by being erected and didn't need a © notice. (If, however, replicas of the statue were offered for sale to the general public, that would've been publication and a lack of a copyright notice might have placed the statue in the public domain.)

I've also posted that over at Template talk:PD-US-statue/proposal, please continue over there. Lupo 10:09, 16 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, this is "limited publication" versus "general publication". If a work was shown to a limited class of persons (not available to just any member of the public) it wouldn't necessarily lose copyright protection. Putting a statue on permanent public display would not seem to qualify though -- that was the "any and all can see it" part of the Werckmeister ruling, I think, and was a general publication. As for the 1978 notes -- interesting, yeah. Lots of gray area. It may be best to treat post-1978 works as unpublished... although, if they give a casting to Brookgreen Gardens, is that "distribution of a copy for purposes of public display"? Seems like it. I guess any post-1978 statue in only one copy is probably "unpublished" though, so there would have to be evidence of copies (other castings, toy replicas made with permission, etc.) Carl Lindberg (talk) 05:07, 17 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks and question[edit]

First: Great work. Thank you very much. And a question for the future: All these sculptures of 1937 - 1971 (Jennewein: Sancho Panza), which you have not listed and for which you have not found an extra copyright notice, are fine for commons? Right? Regards Mutter Erde (talk) 10:42, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not so fast. I said they are in limbo, i.e., we don't know yet what to do with these. See Template talk:PD-US-statue/proposal. It'll take time to work this out properly. I do suspect that most of these also will have to go. The problem is that the Smithsonian descriptions for these sculptures are very rudimentary. Where the Smithsonian has a detailed listing, we may perhaps treat absence of an explicit mention of a © notice in SIRIS as an indication that the sculpture doesn't have one and use {{PD-US-no notice}} on those for the sculpture. But if the SIRIS description does not give a detailed description, it basically just confirms the existence of the sculpture. In such cases, we cannot infer that the sculpture was not copyrighted if SIRIS makes no mention of a notice. Unfortunately, most of the Brookgreen entries in SIRIS are of this latter type. AFAIK, there is no online database or listing of copyright registrations and renewals for sculptures either, so we have no way to check these cases. Basically, it's "we don't know the copyright status". Per the precautionary principle, we should delete them. But nothing is decided yet; the discussion on these has just started. Lupo 11:09, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For your interest[edit]

This uploader has added an interesting description:

en:Image:Colemanyoungbldgdetroit.JPG (one of these pics is on commons too). Regards Mutter Erde (talk) 20:43, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That reasoning and selective quoting is wrong. The full article by Henry Lydiate can be read here. Read it in full. He is a UK lawyer, and the UK does have "freedom of panorama". The U.S. doesn't. Which Mr. Lydiate acknowledges. However, given the recent discussions on our policy on pre-1978 U.S. sculptures, it might well be that it is OK. Does it have a copyright notice? Renewal? Lupo 21:04, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
YEP; you are right, he has only red the half. But this sculpture is from 1958 and is OK for commons, or? [11] Regards Mutter Erde (talk) 21:45, 20 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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