Subject Portal » Digitized Art Collections

The Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago has digitized a number of its works and continues to add to its on-line offerings.  To gain a sense of the collection go to “Search Selected Works” and choose “more options.”

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts houses a collection of close to 350,000 items.  The digital collection is uneven and perhaps not representative of the museum’s strengths.  To browse, go to “Advanced Search” and enter information for the category you wish to view.  Be sure to select “image”.

The Cleveland Museum of Art

 The Cleveland Museum of Art offers over 14,000 digital images from their Print Collection alone, and close to 40,000 images from all of their Departments.  Viewers may also search from a selection of 3800 Artists.

The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco

 The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco is actually two museums; The Legion of Honor and the De Young.  The Legion of Honor specializes in European and ancient works while the De Young focuses on art of the Americas, Oceania and Africa.

While the combined museums have 82,000 images digitized, there is no easy way to browse the collection, and the search mechanism leaves much to be desired.  But for those who are willing to persevere, there are some rich resources to be found here; among them, a wonderfully representative collection of American painting, a large collection of works by Louis Comfort Tiffany, a comprehensive textile collection, and an impressive collection of European decorative art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents selections of digital images from twenty-two of their most noted collections including The Cloisters, The Costume Institute, and Egyptian Art.

Exploring the Timeline of Art History is a rich and worthwhile experience that can link the viewer to a wealth of information and related images.

  The Philadelphia Museum of Art

 The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds substantial collections in European, Asian and American art.  It is renowned for its costume, print and photography collections.

While the search engine does not support browsing, searching is enhanced when the user begins to enter a word by a drop-down “suggestion” menu.  There are 4782 searchable digital images.

 The Smithsonian American Art Museum

 The Smithsonian American Art Museum represents all regions, cultures, and traditions of American Art.  The search mechanism is very user friendly, offering several browsing options and helpful instructions.  Bear in mind that all works are catalogued, and many are digitally represented, but from time to time you’ll get an “image not available” message.

The National Museum of African Art

 The National Museum of African Art offers highly flexible browse and search options with established parameters that assist the user in the selection of categories to be viewed. Collection objects range from ceramics, textiles, furniture and tools to masks, figures and musical instruments, both traditional and contemporary.

The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

 The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum focuses on four areas of design; Product Design and Decorative Arts; Drawing, Prints and Graphic Design; Textiles; and Wallcoverings.  Options include searching and browsing.

The National Portrait Gallery

 The National Portrait Gallery houses an amazingly comprehensive collection of paintings, drawings, cartoons and photographs of Americans, both famous and infamous, from all walks of life; government, sports, entertainment, the arts, literature, science, business, news media, etc.  The search options are very limited, however, and not all images are electronically available.

The British Museum

The British Museum is the national museum of Great Britain and is the repository of an outstanding collection of archaeology and ethnography. The Museum holds objects and artworks dating from the 7th millennium BC to the present day, and covers all major world cultures.  Over six thousand objects from several collections are digitally represented.

The Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum is best known for its collection in the area of decorative arts.  Thus fashion, textiles, jewelry, glass, ceramics and furnishings are all strongly represented.  However, there is also an impressive collection of the works of John Constable.

Unfortunately, there is currently no direct “browse” option on this site, and the viewer is confined to using broad terms to simulate this function. The drop-down window above the Search window may offer some ideas as to what terms are most productive.

National Portrait Gallery

Britain’s National Portrait Gallery is a repository of images representing persons of historical interest in political, military, artistic, scientific and literary venues.

The Tate

 The Tate Online Collection contains selections from all four of the Tate Museums. So the user can access historic British art as well as modern, international art.  This digital collection is very user-friendly, offering several search options, as well as a glossary of terms and a Subject Search that offers useful categories such as Literature and Fiction, and Symbols and Personifications.

  The Courtauld Institute

The Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery has one of the most important collections in Britain, including world-famous Old Master, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and an outstanding prints and drawings collection featuring works by Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne and Turner. The collection includes around 530 paintings, 7000 drawings and 15,000 prints as well as significant holdings of medieval, Renaissance and modern sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, furniture and textiles.

The Courtauld Institute Gallery’s collections are searchable via the Art and Architecture website:
www.artandarchitecture.org.uk.
This includes the complete collection of over 7000 recently digitised drawings, the collection of paintings and a selection of prints, as well as photographic material from the Conway Library.

Search strategies can produce some unexpected results, so the use is advised to refer to the Search Tips in the upper right corner under Advanced Search.

The Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge University

The Fitzwilliam Museum offers use-friendly navigation of its digital collection as well as Pharos, which is designed to guide the visitor through the extensive collections using either time or theme as a starting point.  The Kangxi Chinese vase conservation video is an opportunity to view the step-by-step restoration process of three valuable Chinese vases which were accidentally smashed into hundreds of pieces.

 The Louvre

Atlas, is the gateway to 35,000 works of art on view at the Louvre.  In addition to basic information about individual items, the viewer can also access authoritative commentary and analysis by curators and staff.  Atlas allows simple or advanced searches, and visitors may create a personalized digital album.

 La Fayette   offers digital representations of 1,700 works by American artists acquired by French museums prior to 1940. 

La Joconde,  developed by the Direction des Musées de France, incorporates 120,000 descriptions of drawings, prints, and paintings from the 7th century to the present day, from the collections of over sixty French museums.

Musee d'Orsay

Musee d’Orsay, located in the former Orsay railway station, is home to works of French art created between 1848 and 1914.  It is probably best known for its collection of impressionist works by such painters as Monet, Manet, Pissaro, Renoir, and Cezanne.   The Musee is also home to an extensive collection of decorative pieces in the Art Nouveau style, notably the work of Hector Guimard.

Centre Pompidou

Centre Pompidou is France's national museum of modern art.  The digital collection claims to have 59,000 images available, but sometimes their is a "not available" message in place of an image.  "Recherche multicriteries" will give access to a number of useful search options.

The National Gallery of Canada

The National Gallery of Canada holds significant collections in Canadian, aboriginal and Inuit art, as well as notable modern and contemporary collections.  Cybermuse, the museum’s on-line gallery, offers simple and advanced search features and an opportunity for users to save and share favorites.

The Textile Museum of Canada

The Textile Museum of Canada holds over 12,000 items, many of which have been digitized.  The “Advanced Search” mechanism is designed to help the user quickly determine their search terms and is more user friendly than the single-window general search.

The Freer-Sackler Gallery

The Freer-Sackler Gallery is primarily a museum of Asian art.  It is home to a world-class collection of Chinese and Japanese paintings dating from the 8^th century to modern times.  In addition it houses a wide-ranging collection of ceramics and lacquer ware.  South Asian and Himalayan art, and art of the Islamic world are also strongly represented.

The museum also holds the largest collection of works by James McNeill Whistler in the world.  More than 150 of his etchings are currently available on this web site.

The Morgan Library and Museum

Know for its collections of drawings and prints, printed books and bindings and other manuscripts, the Morgan Library and Museum is most renowned for its exceptional collection of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, thousands of which are now digitally available on their Web site.  The history of the book, the written word and drawings of the recognized masters, including Rembrandt, Turner, Delacroix and Michelangelo, are the focus of this collection.

 Oxford University Library

Oxford University has undertaken numerous digitization projects to make their varied collections more readily available.  In addition to their collection of Medieval manuscripts, a considerable selection of the Ashmolean Collection of Greek Painted Pottery is available, a collection of early English books, and a collection of images regarding transportation known as the Toyota City Imaging Project.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York has developed a premier digital collection that offers browsing options which can be used to quickly develop a knowledgeable overview of modern art.  The user may browse by artist, movement, date, medium, title, or concept.

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

 The Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden houses a collection of contemporary art and culture.  Search and browse functions are available but be sure to click “with images” or you will get a lot of “view record only” hits.