Starting with the invention of social media and sites like Instagram, taking photos has become one of the formalities when people visit exhibitions. Exhibits have thus often been reduced to the backdrops for photos. But recently, some art galleries and museums have banned internet celebrities from taking photos or selfies in those places.

As Shanghai is becoming a city of global influence, it has developed more places with artistic atmosphere for citizens and tourists to enjoy. Therefore, people prefer taking photos there, while some Internet celebrities even take photos for commercial purposes.

But are the exhibits and even the display spaces in the exhibition halls copyrighted works? Though laws in China do not mention display spaces while defining copyright, insiders believe that the display and design are the results of curators’ intelligence and labor, and should be copyright protected.

That is why more and more galleries and niche exhibition venues have begun to explicitly ban internet celebrities from taking photos.