SMFA Library: Food as Sculpture: Image Use and Citation

Using Images in Academic Work

When incorporating copyrighted material, including images, into your academic or artistic work it is important to be aware of the concept of Fair Use.

Fair Use as defined in United States Copyright Law allows copyrighted material to be used for "various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." Fair is defined according to four criteria:

The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
The nature of the copyrighted work
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

Bottom line: Using images in your academic work, as long as that work illuminates and adds to an understanding of those images, is considered Fair Use. As long as you properly cite and attribute credit to an image, you do not need to seek permission from its copyright holder.

Important to note: If your academic work is published and made commercially available, you will most likely need to obtain permission to include any copyrighted images. This guide from NYU has more information on obtaining permissions.

Resources for Finding Images

Subscription Image Databases: these resources are available to all SMFA students, faculty and staff.

Artstor This link opens in a new window
Artstor is a great place to begin your image search. It provides access to 1.6 million (and growing) high-quality images contributed by over 1,500 museums, galleries, universities, and libraries worldwide. Additionally, the SMFA Library regularly uploads digitized images from our newest print books, ensuring that the collection represents a broad spectrum of contemporary art.

Please note that off-campus access to ARTstor is not granted through your library barcode. You will need to create an account on-campus using your e-mail address, after which you will have remote access for 120 days. To renew your off-campus access, simply log in from a computer on the SMFA campus.
CAMIO This link opens in a new window
CAMIO stands for “Catalog of Art Museum Images Online.” Here you will find images of art from museum collections worldwide, including objects from the MFA Boston, the Library of Congress, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Freely Available Image Resources: use this guide to find high-quality, freely available image resources online. Please note that while these collections are freely accessible, the images they feature may not be freely available to download and use for work that is not covered by Fair Use.

Captioning and Citing Images

An important part of using images in your academic work is attributing credit. Each image should include a properly formatted caption, and the final work should include an image list.

The Chicago Manual of Style contains detailed information about formatting your captions and image list. From the link below, select Illustrations and Tables from Part One, Section 3 to get started, or skip to the excerpted information below. Please note that the Chicago Manual of Style is not available off-campus.

Chicago Manual of Style This link opens in a new window

Captions

Label all images with figure or fig. followed by Arabic numerals.
Notes often include: artist’s name (first name, last name), title (italicized), date, materials, measurements, repository and location (if known), and image source.
Source, whether print or electronic, should be cited as per Chicago manual instructions.

Print Source Caption Example
Figure VI. Mark Rothko, Orange and Red on Red, 1957, oil on canvas, 69 x 67 inches, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC. In Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas, by David Anfam. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1998, pg. 84.

Electronic Source Caption Example
Figure VI. Mark Rothko, Orange and Red on Red, 1957, oil on canvas, 69 x 67 inches, The Phillips Collection, Washington DC. Artstor. http://www.artstor.org. (accessed May 20, 2008)

Appendix or List of Images
If your instructor requires a list of images, use the caption citation and reversing the artist’s name (last name, first name).

Contact us!

Please feel free to get in touch with a librarian at any stage of your research process. Stop by the library (located on the third floor of the B side of the Fenway building), or get in touch directly with:

Ashley Peterson

apeterson@smfa.edu
617-369-3653

Darin Murphy

dmurphy@smfa.edu
617-369-3651

Circulation Desk (evening and weekend contact)

library@smfa.edu
617-369-3650

Further Information

Copyright, Fair Use, and academic image use are complex and constantly shifting topics. These excellent guides, from other academic libraries, contain more in-depth information and further suggestions for exploration: