Create Your Own Image Compendium with the Met’s The Collection Online

June 17, 2014

The Metropolitan Museum of Art offers the new picture archive The Collection Online, with some 400,000 images of art searchable by artist, culture, method, material, geographic location, date or era, and even by department. From costumes to books to ceramics to the more obvious paintings and sculpture in limestone or bronze, this collection is incredible in its scope and detail. Searching, say, for a painting by Vincent Van Gogh yields a list of 124 records. Many of these were not works by Van Gogh, but there is an option to limit to the records by that painter. Click on The Potato Peeler and find not only the stats of the painting (oil on canvas from 1885, 16 x 12 1/2in.) but also where to find it in the Museum (Gallery 826) if available. Beneath the image there is some additional information available,

“This painting from February/March 1885, with its restricted palette of dark tones, coarse facture, and blocky drawing, is typical of the works Van Gogh painted in Nuenen the year before he left Holland for France. His peasant studies of 1885 culminated in his first important painting, The Potato Eaters (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).”

You are also informed that on the reverse of the same canvas is a Van Gogh’s Self Portrait with a Straw Hat. Users have the possibility of registering for free, which would enable them to create their own assortment by saving images to an individual collection. The Met is no stranger to successful online endeavors, having just recently won a Webby for their Instagram account through the Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences.

Chelsea Kerwin, June 17, 2014

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