Hey Man, thanks for getting in touch re: copyright / fair use. This is a grey-ish area to be messing with. You could just contact the museum and ask them directly. Go to google image match and find the original photographer and find who owns the rights.
But really its about your intentions to monetise / or not someone else’s work. If this is for ‘TM’ and Marketing for the organisation, and hopefully getting lots of views! inadvertently the copyright holder may hold views one way or another. Best to contact them.
in fair use terms: when you are critiquing or changing the context of an original work and its intentions then this could be considered ‘fair use’ however this might be different to your usage..? which sounds like it's for illustrative purposes…
And then there’s 'creative commons' license which might be worth looking into as a way of convincing the copyright holder of your honest intentions. Not to be monetised.
The Beatles like Led Zeppelin are notoriously difficult to license as everything about them is tied up in money / rights holders…
In the past , I’d just say Do it. But Ai can spot a lot of things and might even register that you have violated image copyright when you upload the final doc. Vimeo is a lot more forgiving than Youtube..
Of course ‘flipping’an image / changing it in photoshop a bit or saying 'found fan footage’ might be ways of navigating this..
Things can always be retrospectively sorted for copyright should the doc. suddenly end up on Netflix.. You could just put it out there - film festivals etc.. And see what the response is before pursuing what might be lengthy negotiations first…
Happy to take a look.
