Copyright Statement

A tension that has surfaced during the process of creating Curatorial Incubator is that which exists between the respective ethics of community-based scholarship and open-access scholarship. Ideally, from the perspective of open-access scholarship, we would be able to write a statement here that declares all our images open-access so that you might use them in your own projects and build on the research presented in the Curatorial Incubator exhibitions. This would also allow us to participate in the movement toward using linked open data thereby putting our project in conversation with other digital projects. That being said, however, our accountability to ethical community-based research demands the opposite approach. Featured here are the works of artists who often create in the face of a shameful lack of systemic support and protection. Indigenous artists and their communities, for example, have been forced to reckon with the tension between promoting their work and protecting their designs and traditions, which have so often been stolen as part of the ongoing violence of colonialism and the related reality of cultural appropriation.

As we navigate these coexisting realities we must always protect the artists, their families, and their communities first, while also striving to be as open-access as possible given those essential limits. With that in mind, we have decided that transparency about copyright and the reasons behind it will be the most suitable approach. In the caption for each piece featured in the Curatorial Incubator you will find the copyright details specific to that piece and its artist. Thank you for understanding and for working with us through this ever-evolving process of research, accountability, and transparency.