Museums, remotely

Honoré Daumier. L’Exposition de 1859: Dire que je vais être…Exposé…1859. Lithograph. Image and data provided by The Phillips Collection.

Missing your favorite museums? Let us reveal them to you remotely. Artstor offers comprehensive coverage of the collections of well over 100 international museums and galleries through various accesses—ranging from fully public, from our community collaborators, as well as Open Artstor collections with works entirely in the public domain—to selections in the Artstor Digital Library that are available to subscribing institutions and their members.

Suzuki Kiitsu. Morning Glories. Early 19th century, Edo period. Pair of six-panel folding screens; ink, color, and gold leaf on paper. Image and data provided by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0 1.0

Peter Henry Emerson. Rowing Home the Schoof-Stuff (from Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads, 1886, plate XXI). 1886. Platinum print, photograph. Image and data provided by The Cleveland Museum of Art. CC0 1.0

George O'Brien. Otago landscape. 1870. Watercolor. Image and data provided by the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. No known copyright.

The Open Artstor initiative has unlatched the doors and vaults of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. In collaboration with the Open Access strategies of these three leading repositories, nearly half a million images are free to all and available for reuse under Creative Commons licenses on our platform. From The Metropolitan Museum, more than 400,000 images present their greatest hits alongside hidden treasures. The recent launch of The Cleveland Museum of Art collection includes a global selection of nearly 30,000 images from the most iconic to the more esoteric works. The Museum of New Zealand is represented by an array of 45,000 images featuring arts and culture, society and history, and the natural world of New Zealand.

Cycladic. Female "Idol." c. ca. 2500-2400 BCE, Early Cycladic. Marble, pigment © Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University. Photo by Bruce M. White, 2006.

Unknown, Ancient Roman. Figure of Venus. c. 118-136 C.E., Hadrianic period. Bronze with traces of gilding. Image © Middlebury College Museum of Art.

Our Public Collections are also enriched with contributions from college museums and galleries around the country, including Bucknell University: Samek Art Museum, Guilford College African Art, the Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University and the Middlebury College Museum of Art, among many others.

Meret Oppenheim. Red Head, Blue Body. 1936. Oil on canvas. Image and data provided by The Museum of Modern Art. © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / Pro Litteris, Zurich.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Young Lady in a Tricorn Hat. c. 1755/1760. Oil on canvas Image and data provided by the National Gallery of Art.

Georgia O'Keeffe. Kachina. 1936. Oil on canvas. Image and data provided by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. © 2020 The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Francesco Laurana. Bust of a Lady. c. 1470s. Marble. Image and data provided by The Frick Collection.

Katharina Fritsch. Herz mit Geld und Herz mit Ähren (Heart with Money and Heart with Wheat). 1998-1999. plastic, aluminum, and paint. Image and data provided by Glenstone. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

In the Artstor Digital Library proper, dozens more museum collections are available for scholarly use and simple pleasure, including national standouts like the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. Likewise, the collections of more intimate institutions are available for viewing and use, such as The Frick Collection, Glenstone, and The Phillips Collection.

Hellenistic. Nike of Samothrace (Winged Victory), detail. c. 190 BCE. Paros marble. Image and data provided by Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, N.Y.

Michelangelo. The Libyan Sibyl from the Sistine Chapel: ceiling frescos. 1508-1512. After restoration. Image and data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.

Caspar David Friedrich. Ships in the Harbor of Greifswald (Der Greifswalder Hafen). c. 1818-20. Oil on canvas. Image and original data provided by Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Photographer: Jörg P. Anders

Italian, North. Woman at a Window. c. 1510-30. Oil on wood. ©The National Gallery, London.

If you’d like to take a virtual stroll in the splendid galleries of Europe, a number of Artstor Digital Library collections from providers that aggregate works from continental museums provide a rich and wide spectrum, namely the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (mostly French museums), Scala Archives (predominantly Italian art and architecture), Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives (diverse international collections), and the Berlin State Museums. We also offer collections dedicated to The National Gallery, London and the Rijksmuseum, among others.

When being there is not an option, a digital tour of a beloved museum may prove the next best thing.

– Nancy Minty, Collections editor