News Archive
IU McKinney MJ Student Publishes Book, Curates Exhibit
01/28/2019
You might think that someone who works in the area of rights and reproductions for a nationally-recognized museum would work with the law on a daily basis. And you'd be right.
Yet, there was no go-to book on the subject, so Anne Young, Manager of Rights and Reproductions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, set out to write it, with the help of colleagues at other museums, libraries, and law firms nationwide.
"There were a few chapters in other works, based in the law," Young said, "and they were not written for the people who work with rights and reproductions every day."
Young spent three years working on the first edition of her book, Rights & Reproductions: The Handbook for Cultural Institutions. It was published by the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the American Alliance of Museums in 2015. Young is the editor and one of the 12 authors of the second edition, which was published by Rowman & Littlefield. A work on display at the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Möbius Ship by Tim Hawkinson, is depicted on the cover of the book, as seen in the photo at left, and in the photo of Young taken at Newfields.
"We wanted to break down the terms and make them understandable for people who work with this area of law every day, but aren't lawyers," Young said. The work also applies to content creators, too, outlining what it takes to guide a creative work through the process of making it available to the public while protecting the creator's intellectual property rights.
Young wasn't looking to change career paths when she decided to go back to school. She graduated from Indiana University Bloomington with a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history and studio art (photography), and from Ryerson University with a Master of Arts degree in photographic preservation and collections management. But as she progressed in her career, Young began to consider applying to law school so she could increase the knowledge of the law she needs for her museum work. Then she discovered IU McKinney's Master of Jurisprudence program.
"I'm able to take the classes that apply to the museum world," Young said. She's taken courses in art and museum law, nonprofit organizations, intellectual property law, and trusts and estates, among others. "It's completely individualized to help me professionally," she said of the degree program. Professor Lea Shaver is her advisor, and Young was a student in her copyright class in Spring 2018 when work on Rights and Reproductions: The Handbook for Cultural Institutions, Second Edition was completed. Young asked Professor Shaver to review the new edition, and the professor agreed, as seen in the photo at right.
Young is an artist herself, specializing in photography. She came to Newfields after working as a photographic archivist at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, where she digitized and condition reported their collection of more than 2,300 George Platt Lynes vintage negatives. It's no surprise then that she ended up being one of the curators of the exhibition Sensual/Sexual/Social: The Photography of George Platt Lynes currently on view at Newfields. Renowned in his day as a fashion and ballet photographer, he was later known for his photographs of male nudes. "Taking on a curatorial role with this exhibition allowed me to not only further explore the photography of Lynes, but to also flex all of my educational background, including the M.J. program. We examined the legal issues that photographing male nudes could have brought Lynes and his models and distilled those into accessible language that guests to the museum could easily understand," Young said. Lynes became acquainted with Dr. Alfred Kinsey in the late 1940s, and the Kinsey Institute subsequently received the largest collection of photographs and negatives outside of the Lynes Estate. The exhibition ran through February 24.
