As more and more cultural institutions are placing their collections online, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is leading the charge. The iconic museum's Open Access policy led them to put 375,000 images under the Creative Commons license earlier this year and now they are teaming up with the Internet Archive for a new digital release.
The Internet Archive is already a treasure trove of goodies, housing over 13 million free books and keeping an archive of almost 300 billion web pages. The collection has just gotten richer thanks to a new collaboration with the MET, which recently placed a little over 140,000 art images onto the site.
Clearly organized into searchable categories, you can take a peek at everything from a 19th-century music box to numerous paintings by Van Gogh. Divided into both topics and collections, you can hone in on a myriad of objects, from figurines and cups to works from Iran and Peru. And the images aren't limited to painting and sculpture. Photographs, textiles, earthenware, and ceramics, as well as jewelry and candleholders, are just some of the materials available.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has recently placed over 140,000 art images on the Internet Archive, making their collection more accessible than ever. Here is a sampling of what you can find.
Vincent van Gogh. Wheat Field with Cypresses. (1889)
Utagawa Yoshiiku. Sumo Wrestler Tossing a Foreigner. (1861)
Cased Colt Model Police Revolver. (1862)
Albrecht Dürer. The Rhinoceros. (1515)
Johan Hagemeyer. Albert Einstein, Pasadena. (1931)
Harper's. (June 1893)
Lewis Hine. Icarus, Empire State Building. (1930)
Music box. (c. 1810)
h/t: [Open Culture]
All images via the Metropolitan Museum of Art / Internet Archive.
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